Log:Array Consortium: Ryloth Holiday

Array Consortium: Ryloth Holiday

OOC Date: October 20, 2017
Location: Nar Shaddaa, Ryloth
Participants: Adhar Gann, Nadia Cuul

<< At the ATec Armomat on Nar Shaddaa, Adhar is doing business - and receives a visitor. >>

Adhar Gann is...a boss.

Well, what he is, is heavily armored - head to toe in heavy battle armor, the Captain squints at a datapad in his hand as he stands near the display projectors. Mind you, nobody seems to notice him as special, even with the plates; it's an armor store, after all, and he looks like just another customer.

Nadia is not heavily armored, point of fact, she's barely armored. She does not frequent armor shops or need their wares in most cases... in her line of work if things get to the point she needs armor, it's already gotten well out of her wheelhouse.

That said, the Consortium does hold a stake in this establishment and so she comes in. Not to shop, but to socialize.

Another body in a shop gives the impression of business, which benefits her in the long run. So there she is, stepping in, and going about looking at various peices of armaments for the sake of appearances.

"Ah." Adhar looks up from his work as he hears the doors hiss open, smiling. "Good evening, Nadia. How are you? Come down to see what else has rolled into stock? You'll find inventory will be shifting in a half an hour or so."

"Nope." Nadia says without looking up from where she's inspecting some sort of plate meant for, in this case, a human males groin. "Just standing around loitering..." And getting out of the perpetual rain. She tosses down the plate and walks over towards armored captain while dusting off her hands, "Lucrative business?"

He chuckles. "It's getting there," he says. "We'll get our word out soon enough. A good way to provide a base revenue for our endeavours." A beat. "I'm thinking of expanding into starship parts. What say you, eh?"

"That there's more than enough competition to make that less than profitable." Nadia eyes a few more pieces of ware as she approaches, but sets her sights on Adhar once she's stopped. Arms crossed beneath her coat, "Do you like being a smuggler or are you trying to be a businessman?"

"They feed into each other," he says, nodding at the datapad in his hand. "Arms distribution means more smuggling, means more connections for more distribution." Adhar looks up at you. "And yes, perhaps not as profitable, but it would cut -our- costs."

"Eh..." Nadia flicks her wrist, "I'm not a criminal mastermind or anything, so I'll leave the big moves to the professionals." She goes about looking around the shop, "You say that..." In a distracted voice while she peers around, "But I wager as soon as you start bleeding credits fixing up smuggler ships for half price, you'll rethink it."

"Then by all means, do make a suggestion as to an alternative." Adhar looks to you. "You may recall, I listen to those."

"I already told you, I'm a smuggler. I move illegal shivak to places that authorities don't want them for a profit. Sometimes I forge documents..." Nadia says, shrugging a shoulder, "Steal supplies, hide refugees, I use to run slaves.." Waving her hand, which then becomes a raised finger, "But if I were going to establihs a front? I'd probably use something like this." Pointing around, "Obviously I'd have someone in the backroom or lower level that does identification forgery." She continues with a shrug, "Maybe a warehouse to store wares before they go through customs... or something with a private spaceport like.. say... a parts vendor that doesn't actually sell parts. At least not expensive stuff, that draws peoples attention.."

"Well, naturally," Adhar says with a quirk of his brows. "I've already been looking for warehouse space - a bit difficult here thanks to the Hutts, but nobody who knows of us would believe these businesses to be legitimate anyway. So, starship parts. Garage. Hangar...and as you say, room for additional services. Percentages paid to the right people, naturally, to keep too much attention from our activities. But there's no trying to scam the Hutts. Not here. The Republic, though...well." Adhar shrugs. "That's what Kalarba is for."

"As long as you deal the Hutts their cut, you'll get treated fair. They can't afford to turn every smuggler against them." Nadia shakes her head, "Everyone hates them... I prefer them to the alternative. The republic starts getting into the illegal business and we'll have a real problem on our hands." She clarifies, "Except Eebua, the hell with that slug."

"Naturally." Adhar checks his gauntlet, which is chiming. "I'm going to Ryloth. You want to join me?"

"Ryloth...?" Nadia cants her head, "The hell are you going to Ryloth for?" There's only one thing worth going to Ryloth for, afterall.

"Delivering cargo," Adhar says. "It's up to you."

Nadia shrugs, thumb behind her gunbelt, "I've got nothing better to do. We're in cargo lockdown for a day and a half anyways."

"Then off we go." He takes the datapad over to the window, sliding it through the drawer that the clerk beyond opens. "Come on."

<< And so the two board Adhar's vessel, the Distant Star. >>

Heading up quickly to the cockpit and letting you tour the boat on your own, Adhar is busy getting the ship in the air - and, by the time you join him, the ship has already breached atmosphere and is out among the stars. Which is...deceptively fast for a stock freighter. (repose)

Nadia joins Adhar in the cockpit and quickly finds a place to sit at the comms station with her feet crossed on the edge of the control board. Space isn't as exciting to her as it use to be, at least not taking off and hitting hyperspace. After a while it just becomes another thing she sees daily.

"So." He turns around in the pilot's chair, looking to you. "What do you think of her?"

"Mon Cal ships are..." Nadia shrugs, looking around, "Hedious. But I'm sure she's just a lovely ship."

"They're incredibly useful," Adhar says with a chuckle. "This is a new model, a Clearwater-class. Very well armed and with a 225-ton cargo bay. Which is useful, because while we're hauling mostly construction equipment, we're also hauling half a quarter million in military-grade targeting chips." He makes a little wave with his hands. "Surpriiiiiiise!"

Nadia upnods at Adhar, "To Ryloth." She says with a little shrug, "Better to sell their grandmother I guess?" Her opinion of Mon Cal ships is not changed by these specifications.

"To Ryloth," Adhar says with a shrug. "It's a relay point - the cargo's real, mind you." He looks down at his attire. "I suppose I could have changed, but I'm used to people shooting at me." He peers. "You okay? You seem...more deflated than usual."

"Huh?" Nadia glances up from where she's running her claw across the arm of the chair where she's lounging, "Oh. Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking." She waves her hand a little, "Keep talking, I'm interested. What in the world does Ryloth need military grade computer chips for?"

"It's just a meeting point," he says, and leans forward a bit. "This the kind of thinking that's none of my business, or would it help to sort out in your head if you talked about it?"

"It's nothing." Nadia deflects with a wave of her hand, looking back towards the stars streaming past the viewport. "How long until we reach slaveworld?"

"Very soon, in fact," Adhar says. "Good drives on this boat. You wanna come with me to the meeting, serve as backup in case things get dumb?"

"Eh." Nadia shrugs again, still watching the stars, "Sure. Liable to shoot a Twi'lek though. Still sore about their red cousin."

"Yeah, same here." Adhar shakes his head. "What a shavit."

"Got that right." Nadia grabs her blaster off the console and stands so it can slip in the holster on the back of her right hip, "Who's the contact?"

"Guy named Sada Nin," he says as he directs the ship toward Ryloth. "He's a courier taking delivery, works for the client. We get paid on delivery." No customs challenge you as you enter - such is the proximity to the planet that the captain's made the jump back to realspace that the customs cordon is completely bypassed, and he sets the ship up for a rapid descent into the atmosphere. Ryloth's freezing side is best for such things, what with re-entry friction. "Right, let's get down there."

Nadia is no stranger to the planet or its intricacies, "Lead the way." Said with a hand held out for him to bring them down to the meeting on a frozen side of a slavers hovel.

The ship makes it past the frozen band and into the temperate sliver, finding the landing cavern for public traffic - guiding the ship on in and landing it in the bay, Adhar gets to his feet as the Distant Star begins to power down. "Right on," he says, adjusting the half-cape draped around his shoulders. "Let's go."

Descending the ramp, Adhar has a brief conversation with a pair of armed security guards and a customs official - gesturing toward the ship and chatting. Whatever he says, he is let past without one of the guards waving the scanner wand in his hand at the smuggler. "C'mon," Adhar calls to you once you walk out onto the deck. "This way."

Nadia is thankful for being covered with fur when they hit the otherwise unpleasant chill of the darkside of the planet. She glances towards the guard and customs, but wears that nonchalant expression that pretty much walks her through almost all of her life. Once business is conducted, she follows along with Adhar, hands in the pockets of her coat.

Well, maybe Adhar wore that armor for its climate-controlled capabilities, who knows. He gestures for you again, and as you follow, waits for you to get near before he heads east into the city proper.

No environmental seals here. Nadia works through the chill as they make their way, head tilted against the frozen breeze.

At this point, Adhar leads you into one of the larger boreholes drilled into the tunnel. This one, happily, is heated.

<< At which point, the two enter O'aib's Cantina. >>

If you've seen one cantina, you've seen them all. Even if it is just a hole in the side of a dirt mound, Force dammed twi'leks. She brushes her hands off and shakes her head to warm her ears which've pressed against the side of her head. "We meeting them here?"

"We're burning time," Adhar says, shaking his head. "We got in early. Just a half an hour, nothing crazy." He heads over to one of the little club's few empty tables, and sitting at the stone pillar tries to get a bit more comfortable.

Nadia drops into a seat after tossing her blaster on the table. Immediately her feet are up and crossed on the edge with one arm laid out across the back of the chair and the other against the side of the table. "Music is lovely."

"You like jizz?" Adhar chuckles. "Hard to find people in our line of work who do." He watches the little guys blasting away for a moment, then looks back. "I like opera. S'how I managed to make a bad first impression with Kasia, but I think I told you that story before."

"No I do not." Nadia says with a glance around the club, "I was being conversational. I don't really like music. It's distracting and makes it hard to hear what's going on around you.. and I don't have enough free time to indulge outside of work. So I don't see the point."

Well, after a few glasses of ale or whiskey, the time passes...and passes...and still no guy. Half an hour after zero time, Adhar frowns at the chrono built into his gauntlet.

"So," he says after a moment, "We have come to a decision point. Do we leave the planet, and contact the buyer, or do we go look for the courier?"

"You know your way around Ryloth?" Nadia raises a furry eyebrow, eyes down on the half glass of whiskey in front of her, "Because I sure don't... and I don't know a single person here." At least none that are in the business of finding people and not selling them afterwards.

"I would like to get paid, though.."

"Well, give me a minute." Adhar gets to his feet and heads toward the bar, wherein he begins to talk to one of the droid bartenders. Which is, at least on the surface, something of an exercise in futility.

Nadia finishes her drink with a sour expression because even the taste of cheap whiskey is lessened by being drunk on Ryloth. These musing keep her from watching Adhar argue with a droid though, so that's a plus.

And yet, Adhar's efforts apparently work out - he comes back with a faint grin on his face. "Come on," he says. "I've got an address."

Nadia steps up from her seat and takes the blaster off the table. As they exit she's slipping it into her holster and closing the jacket around herself against the cold, "I guess it would be too much to ask for him to have just been downstairs."

"Well, not downstairs," says Adhar, "But not /too/ far away. I took a chance that a guy who was a regular here might have a tab, and that tab might not always be paid up on time..." He shrugs. "Repo man."

Nadia shakes her head, back out in the cold with her hands up by her mouth to blow steamy air into them in a vein attempt to warm them. "Full of surprises. Chatting up a droid about some deadbeat who frequents Ryloth... You know it's a pretty good chance he deals in slaves right?"

"Well, it's a little different on this planet," Adhar grunts. "We talked about that, I think, yeah?" He doesn't seem to want to have the conversation again. "So anyway, I played repo man. So let's go see where this guy's at. He'd better not be drinking. I do /not/ want to screw my reputation on some juicehead courier."

So there's that.

Nadia shakes her head and snickers, the sound like chuffing air through a grater behind Adhar. There was no way she wasn't going to bust his balls over this, "Mighty hypocritical of you, that's all I'm saying." She jabs, then parries away with an easy, "When we get there, I'll do the talking."

"Yeah, I'm still working it out," he says as he leads you through the tunnels and crowds. "I hate that they sell themselves into indentured servitude here, but at least they're making the choice. Other people don't get that choice. That's what I'm choosing to focus on right now."

"A planet so horrible, they'd rather be slaves than stay here." Nadia says with a snort, "And we willingly showed up to do business on it. I'm sure they're laughing their ass off over that irony." She keeps pace despite the cold.

"I'm sure," Adhar grunts. "But we're not dealing in slaves, we're dealing in weapons components, so."

At length, the two of you make it down into the residential levels, finally reaching the 'house' that Adhar has the address for. Bored into the rock, a single metal door provides access, and a pair of glassed-in windows are dark.

"So," Adhar says. "Maybe he's not home after all."

"Or maybe he's hiding in there... which doesn't make me feel much better about being on this Force damned world." Nadia bangs her balled fist against the metal door, "Hey shivat head, get your ass out here or I'm kicking the damn door in!" She looks to Adhar and shrugs.

"Kriff that," Adhar says, and marches right to the door - and pauses, frowning. "The door's open." He fits his armored fingers into a crack at the edge, and just...slides it open, unpowered.

Nadia immediately reaches beneath her coat to take hold of the blaster pistol on her back, "Careful." She says, hand on Adhar's shoulder, "Power's out... no lights inside.." She slides past him, "I see pretty good in the dark."

Adhar pulls on his helmet, chuckling. "I can see perfectly in the dark as well," he says, his voice now metallic through its voxgrille. "Let's go. Carefully." His own gun is out - when did that happen? - and he enters after you, sealing the door behind you.

Nadia sweeps the first room with the barrel of her blaster clearing around corners before she herself does. She's clearly been in a few firefights and isn't just good from sitting on a practice range.

The room beyond is a large one, a communal room with table, chairs, all that mess - native hangings, etcetera. A refresher is in the back, along with what looks like a kitchen, and a staircase is cut into the stone leading upward. Everything is dark, save for those items that have their own power. Occasional blips and beeps in the dimness.

"All right," he murmurs, "So. Looks clear down here. You want to head upstairs and I'll sweep down here to be sure?"

Nadia up nods in the green glow of his nightvision and starts towards the stairs in a low, ready stance. Her blaster extended as she ascends the stairs, turning to walk the last few backwards in case there's a banister upon which someone might set up a firing nest.

No banister, just a plain staircase up to a landing - and there, even farther back into the caves, is cut another room - small, squalid, an loft bedroom. Old furniture, rotten furnishings. And at the end, next to the windows facing the street, a bed.

Shapes there, in the bedclothes. Indeterminate.

Nadia pushes any doors open with the barrel of her pistol and moves side foot, one over the other. She might see fine in the dark, but some things fade into the grey of her vision, little details, things she's more than capable of avoiding if she keeps moving slowly.

Seeing the shapes on the bed she closes her hand around the blaster in her right hand, kneels out and down, and tries to pull the sheets off whatever is in the bed.

Death.

The face of a Twi'lek man stares back at you, tan-skinned, missing a good portion of his skull - a fist-sized hole where his eye had been, cauterized, drilled all the way through the bottom of the bed. Close-ranged blaster shot, assassination-style. Next to him, lying on her stomach, a naked Twi'lek woman, green skin sallow in the dim light from outside. Neither move.

Adhar's footfalls on the steps behind you. "It's clear down there," he's saying. "How's it...oh."

Nadia keeps pulling the sheet off. "Not sure what I've found, but I'm in here." She says over her shoulder, barrel still pointed at the bed.

"Oh, good." Adhar takes a few steps forward, frowning at the two. "That's him," he says, nodding at the man's corpse. "I've got a holo. Don't know about the woman. Is she dead too?"

Nadia stands slowly and looks around the room with a little frown, blaster still in hand, "I guess we've got a cargohold full of parts he doesn't need anymore?" pointing her blaster at him, "Unless he's a master of disguise?"

The woman? Nadia turns and narrows her eyes at her, "If you're not dead, talk. If you don't talk I'm going to shoot you." The blaster levels on the corpse(?) "Five. Four."

"He's just taking the chips," Adhar says, though he keeps his own gun trained on the bed. He falls quiet as you speak to the body - who, after you get to 'two', makes a tiny, gasping squeak, and whispers something breathless with fear in the language of her people.

From his belt, the translator droid intones cooly: 'Please, don't kill me. I didn't know. I don't want to!'

Nadia does not understand the language, but she does know it's a language, "Smart girl." The blaster is lowered, but not holstered, while Adhar gets the translater out on and on. "You're fine, I only shoot corpses." She waits for that to translate or the girl to acknowledge she understands, "Who did this?"

"Please! I don't - they'll come, and they...you have to get out of here!"

Adhar comes to the side of the bed, frowning - gun in one hand, he pulls the blanket up over the woman with the other, rolling her over. He freezes, then, as he looks into eyes enormous with terror, dried blood at the corner of a wide mouth. She has a proton grenade in her hands, clasped to cover her breasts, taped around her hands with a great wad of sealant tape.

"I'm sure the- What are you doing?" Nadia ask Adhar, interrupting whatever she was about to say to the woman. When she that proton grenade, however, her own eyes widen.. "Welp..." One step back, "I hope you have a wonderful evening, but we were just about to leave."

"No..." Adhar pauses, and puts his gun away - coming up a long-bladed vibrodagger instead. "These have activation plungers, see how her thumb's on it? All I have to do is cut the tape, and we can turn the charge off easily enough."

Seeing the woman flinching at the sight of the blade, he holds a hand out. "It's all right," he says, pitching his voice into what he hopes is a soothing tone. "I'm going to get you out of this."

"Ehhh..." Nadia keeps backing up, "If that thing goes off, everyone on this block is going to have a bad day..." Proton grenades are bad, mkay? "I'm all for getting paid, but these people have military grade ordinance, that's a little out of our wheelhouse."

"They call them arms dealers for a reason, Nadia," Adhar says, still looking at the woman - who, it must be said, is doing a very good job of not /completely/ losing her mind, or might just have already reached that air of mental detachment in the face of mortal danger and death. She shrinks from him, even as he gently advances.

"Please," he says, "I need to get this off of you. Nobody's going to die, here. I can turn this off, do you understand? I can turn this off, and nobody's going to die. Everything is going to be all right, and you can just...go home. Do you understand? Everything is going to be all right. Just let me cut the tape."

"They call them arms dealers with military grade ordinance and they call me not messing with people like that." Nadia isn't scared, this is not being stupid and nowhere near altruistic, "I doubt you're paying me what this costs.." Motioning around the room, "So let's get on the ship, get the hell off this rock, and go find a new buyer for your parts." Still taking steps backwards, almost to the stairs now, "Because this is well outside of my comfort zone."

"All right," he says. "Just...let...me.....right." The knife goes through the tape easily, and in just a few slashes, he has the grenade in his hand, thumb on the plunger still. The dagger goes into his belt, and he steps back from the woman. "Get dressed and get out of here," he tells her. "But before you do, tell me who did this."

The woman looks down at her hands, then looks up at you both - and says, 'Tanaro.' And then she's fleeing from the house, running past you and heading for the stairs.

"Shavit," Adhar mutters. "Tanaro Peta. Yeah, let's get the kriff out of here, Nadia. You got the right idea."

It doesn't matter that Nadia doesn't have a clue in the Force who Tanaro Peta is, she was leaving regardless. She knows he has proton grenades and she knows she doesn't. That is quite enough knowledge for any sane person who wants to eventually retire from this life of crime. "Not with that thing..." Pointing at the proton grenade, "She was holding onto it just fine... but I'm not getting on a ship with that... Do you know how to work a grenade? I damn sure don't.."

"Proton charges are pretty easy," he says, holding up the device. "It's, uh, got instructions on it." He twists the plunger one way, and releases it; a light turns green on its top, next to the dial, and winks out.

"Got it," Adhar says, and tosses the thing aside. "So, yes. Let's go. Now."

Don't have to tell Nadia twice.. Hell, she was downstairs before that things light ever blinked green. Now standing in the foyer peeking out in the street, "People saw us come in here and I have absolutely zero interest in dealing with whoever did this." She glances at the Adhar coming down the stairs, "Letting the girl go was a mistake."

"Coming after this guy was a mistake," Adhar says grimly. "Tanaro Peta's local, but he's nasty. We need to get back on the ship and get out of here, suns /below/." A beat. "I'm glad I wore battle armor. Just...stay behind me as we go out."

"Should have just left when we saw your contact was dead." Nadia wont rub this in, but this is how she's survived... not getting involved with this. "We didn't owe that guy anything and he clearly pissed off this Peta shivak.." She checks her blaster, spins the cylinder, and up nods at Adhar, "I am not dying on Ryloth.""

"Gonna have to get through me, first." Adhar strides downstairs, pistol out, and leads the way to the door - carefully, as he reaches the doorway. There, he leans out a bit, scanning the street.

Nadia grabs Adhar's shoulder, "Incoming." She says looking back into the house proper, "Where's that proton grenade? I've got an idea..." Already headed up stairs, she's not likely to be taking no for an answer.

"Shavit," Adhar mutters as you point them out - five, maybe six Twi'lek men, all armed and in armor of some kind or another. Most are carrying rifles. While you run up stairs for the grenade, he presses himself into the shadows, doing his best to set up his own little sniper point as he pulls the door closed.

Nadia jogs back down with proton grenade in hand and kneels down beside the door, "Here's hoping they're stupid... but they are Twi'lek, so..." She shrugs and sets the grenade up, following the instructions to keep the pin pressed against the door... "Might want to get upstairs..." She says, pointing at the doorway, "This thing is going to cause quite a fireshow." She's following her own advice. "If I die, I'm going to haunt your grave.."

"No." Adhar shakes his head. "Don't. We don't need this thing armed to use it as a distraction." He squints through the gap as best he can with his helmet on. "It doesn't have an easily visible charge indicator - we can just throw it out there and take off, you see? Easy."

Adhar Gann adds, "Taking out a city block is going to shred our reputation."

"I am not going out of an unfamiliar planet guns blazing hoping they fall for a ruse... and I care a lot more about my life than my reputation." Nadia seeths from halfway up the stairs, "I didn't bring proton grenades to a gunfight, they did.. but I'll be damned if I going to hand them a grenade they can throw at me later.. That is not how I got to be forty years old in this business." Since her business does not involve this. Not at all.

"We do -not- kill innocents." Adhar pulls off his helmet, staring up at you, eyes black and hard in the shadows of the house. "I need you to trust me. We either sneak out the door now, or we take these kriff-eaters out, but this charge is designed to take out whole buildings, you understand? We might trigger a cave-in and bring the mountain down on us all." He pauses to peer out the door. "Make a decision now, because they're coming. We got maybe a minute left."

Nadia stands halfway up the stairs, hand on the wall, staring at Adhar. "You kriffing boyscout.." She seeths and starts back down at a jog to take up the proton grenade, unprime it, and prepare to toss it in the street. "How fast can you move in that big clunky bullshavit?" Eyeing him, slowly cracking the door to get a look at where the twi'lek are. "Because I'm not going to wait for you..." And she knows all the codes to get the ship started.

Let's hope she's talking out of her ass, right?

"I'll tell you all about proton charges later," Adhar says, turning it off and clipping it to his belt before you come down. "You let me worry about moving clunky - you just get out of here. Worst comes to worst, I've got the chips. I'll distract 'em one way or another. Just...get out of here safe."

He slides open the door, pulling the armor's cloak around him, and - helmet off and on his belt again - slips out into the street.

Nadia is usually a lot more sneaky, but this is Ryloth and the place reeks of failure. Such is the case as she nearly trips over the unfamiliar design of the doorway carved out of the side of a mountain and only barely makes it into an alleyway before any of the four can see her. That was entirely too close.

Adhar is...gone, apparently, having completely blended into the crowd. How the hell does he do that? And yet there are plenty of cloaks out there, and without his helmet...

"I'm back here," he calls from the back of the alley, actually another bored-out accessway leading to another tunnel-street. "You all right?"

Nadia knows her way back to the starport and just assumes he thought splitting up would be a better move... and he wouldn't be wrong. Then he's there again, calling out from an alley caved in a mountain, "I'm fine, why wouldn't I be?" She doesn't acknowledge the fact that she tripped and it's probably not a good time to point it out by her tone and hard stare directed towards the street.

Adhar does no such thing - he's in action mode, scanning the street beyond. "Come on," he says. "Let's get out of here."

Nadia nods, hand on the blaster in the holster still on her back, and turns to follow him at in a low stance sliding her back into the alleyway and out of eyeshot of the street. "This turned into a cluster..." She growls, probably to herself.

"Sometimes they do," he agrees. Draped as he is in the cloak, it's fairly hard to tell what he's wearing underneath - he's had a lot of experience, it would appear, wearing those plates. "All right, into the crowd we go."

And thus does he start walking.

"Yeah, talking down a customs officer or..." Nadia waves her hand, "The occasional double cross... but military grade ordinance?" She shakes her head slipping into the crowd with Adhar, hood coming up from beneath her coat to cover her head in darkness. It's likely connected to her flightsuit, "The Force be damned kind of business was your contact into that got this brought down on our heads?"

"It's not the contact," Adhar says as the two of you make your way down the tunnel-street, keeping close as possible without attracting attention. "It's Tanaro Peta. He's a heavy in the local crime scene, come up in the ranks after the Empire collapsed. Ryloth is pretty much frontier territory again, so the Republic hasn't got much reach out here." He shakes his head faintly. "Likely he heard about the transfer, maybe from that girl, or someone like her...and decided he wanted what we had. Probably has another buyer."

"So let's sell him the chips..." Nadia doesn't care about the contact and she doesn't really seem to care about the girl who had a proton grenade taped to her hands either. "If he wants them, let's give them to him... besides, if he's got his hands on that kind of kriffing hardware?" Pointing at the grenade, at least where she saw him clip it to his belt what with he cloak, "I'm sure a couple unaffiliated smugglers looking to make a buck are exactly the sort he needs to expand his operation."

"I can buy thermal detonators off the street on Nar Shaddaa," Adhar says with a toss of his head. "Proton grenades actually aren't as powerful, they're just designed to collapse buildings. It's a nuclear explosion, not a controlled fusion-heat detonation like with thermal detonators or the like. Only reason I stopped you." He checks his wrist-comm as the two of you slowly make your way back up toward the spaceport. "So. Think we'll get any company back at the ship?"

"I'm not saying they're not widely available, I'm saying he has them on Ryloth... enough so that he just taped one to a hussies hands like a peekabo game..." Nadia looks at Adhar with a squint, "So let's get in touch with this dude, get our credits, and leave this world..." Wiggling fingers out towards the heaven, grumbling quietly about... everything, Grumpy cat. "Probably. Your luck is shavit."

"Could just take a shuttle back to Nar Shaddaa," Adhar muses. "Though we might not get the ship back, so to hell with that - all right." He steps out of the crowd, off to the side of the sidewalk, and consults his wristcomp again. "I'm going to see about contacting the client. Keep watch, all right?"

Nadia up nods at Adhar and finds a perch from which she can watch the street as nonchallent as she ever is with her hood up. Cathar aren't as frequent on Ryloth as other places, afterall. "I'd just as soon he let us leave than not. Unless your ship is faster than it looks..." She doubts it, "Or we had the Rancor." Which they don't.

"Much faster," Adhar says, turning away from the crowd to begin dicking around with the commlink. Beep boop. Bop. Meanwhile the throngs pass - mostly Twi'leks, anonymous, head-tails wriggling as words, spoken and posed, filter between them all. Many are armed; any could be allies of this crime boss Adhar speaks of. Anyone could be looking for you. What a time to be alive.

Twi'lek literally all look the same too. Except markings and colors, they don't have many distinguishing features and they all have those stupid head things that wiggle all the time. Nadia frowns a little beneath her hood and glannces back at Adhar with hurry the hell up written in her stare.

A few minutes pass, uncomfortable minutes when eyes are upon you, head-tails wiggle, and an endless stream of slaves and citizens, travelers and gangsters alike all pass by.

Finally, Adhar turns back, shaking his head. "Got in touch with the client's rep," he says. "They recognize the situation and have a secondary contact set up. Good news is they're not far away, but the bad news is they're off-planet. We're going to need to get back on the ship and meet them in far orbit. The cargo's offloaded, so we can get out of there, but I couldn't get any information about security. Might be people there, might not."

Nadia shakes her head, "Here's hoping our ship isn't already impounded..." Shouldering off the lamp, one hand in her pocket and the other laid lightly against her back. "Let's get the hell out of here... I'm getting antsy."

"Shouldn't be," Adhar mutters, "But that's a good point. We ought to get danger pay for this, suns below." Back into the crowd, freezing and sweating under your clothes, and toward the spaceport you go.

Finally, you reach the landing caverns unmolested. The spaceport complex yawns beyond, glittering with lurid holograms and flatscreen advertisements. "Right," Adhar says with a frown as the spaceport doors await you ahead. "Here we are. How you want to play this?"

"We haven't done anything yet and there's no way we're sneaking into a busy spaceport..." Nadia glances over at Adhar.. then nods towars an alley, "head over there." Already starting herself, slipping out of sight into the darkness.

"Right," he says. "I'll lead, same as before." And so he does, being the one plated up.

Eventually, the two of you make it to the landing cavern in which the ship is stored; the doors hiss open, revealing a small knot of people standing about the ship, which is, apparently, still sealed after being unloaded and allowed to close up again. These people are, in fact, heavily armed, and mostly Twi'lek. Nobody is in uniform.

"Right," Adhar says, lingering just outside of the doorway. "So that's going to be a problem."

Nadia pokes her head out at Adhar when he doesn't follow and pulls her jacket back on while jogging to catch up, "Okay, so let's do it your way then... But you're right, I expect danger pay." Jacket popped around her armor, scanning the terminal while they make their way through and then stopping in her tracks when she sees the knot of individuals around the ship. "You should probably rethinking selling these guys the chips.. make our credits, get off world, and the original buyer can go kriff himself for doing this meet on Force Damned RYLOTH of all planets."

"Thing about Peta is that he's not a deep thinker," Adhar says. "He's likely just to try and kill us and take the chips. Which is why..." Closing his eyes, Adhar pulls on his helmet - and, unclipping the grenade from his belt, thumbs the plunger.

"So," says the metallic voice, "If this doesn't work, be ready to take a shuttle back to Nar Shaddaa. Otherwise, get ready to get on board."

"He's smart enough to run a criminal or- whatever, you're just a boy scout." Nadia pulls her blaster and leans against the inner hatchway of the platform cavern, "I am not dying here Adhar.. I'm serious." She muses, "And if you die, I'm sell him the chips and taking your ship..."

"If I die," Adhar says, "That whole bay is going up. Besides, Peta didn't take my call." So he /did/ try, eh? "Right. Here we go. Just watch."

And...in he goes, grenade not yet revealed, calling out to the assembly. "Gentlemen," he calls, "What is this I see before me? Surely a group to see me off in style? To what do I owe the honor?"

One of them steps forward, a mean-looking green-skinned fellow with eyes replaced with clunky prosthetics that give him the appearance of having a droid's eyes. He carries a light repeater in his arms. "Gann," he calls. "You've got something that belongs to us."

"Surely not, sir," Adhar replies. "I haven't the slightest idea who you are."

Nadia watches Adhar tramps out there like this is some sort of pre-historic gunfight at some animal wrangling establishment on a far flung world where they still wore cowboy hats, but she's had just about enough of this bullshavit.

So she steps out from behind the inner sectional of the doors, lifts her pistol, and fires off a shot across the mean looking green-skinned fellas shoulder. "I'm so sick of this place..." She seeths. Stepping forward, blaster held out towards another one of the individuals, "You cannot know how much... but he's holding a proton grenade and I'm not getting killed by twi'leks. So either get out of my kriffing way or get your ass blown all the way out of your forehead."

She holds the blaster up and thumbs the hammer back. "I don't give a shavit which. Kriffing Ryloth.."

"Well, she's not wrong," says Adhar, holding up said grenade - and a monstrous hand-cannon in the other, which is leveled at the man with the droid-eyes. "You shoot me, I drop it, it goes off and kills all of you. You shoot her, she haunts you for the rest of your existence. Either is just as bad." He sounds very cheerful as he says this. "So, do yourselves a favor and get the hell out, lads. This can only end in blood and fire, otherwise."

"You wouldn't dare, Gann," says the dude with the droid-eyes, but though he doesn't seem to believe Adhar, a shot off his bow and the approach of said fearsome feline femme seems to have put him off-balance enough not to want to take the chance. "Don't ever come back to Ryloth, if you want to live. We'll be watching for you."

"I assure you," says Adhar, touching a control on his forearm that unseals the boarding hatch, "I have no such plans anytime soon. Good evening, gentlemen."

And so, gun in one hand and grenade in the other, he heads up the ramp after you.

"Don't you ever muse a hair on your bald, wiggly head about whether I'll be back to Ryloth..." Nadia assures the man, holding her gun on him while heading up the ramp to get inside, "Stay here with that thing while I get the ship started..." She says to Adhar, heading for the cockpit with her blaster slipping into the holster on her back, "I'm sure your ship can outrun the blast."

"Aye aye," Adhar chirps pleasantly as you order him about, keeping he gun on robot-eyes over there - but they're already backing away from the ship, while Adhar drops and punches the ramp control.

It's about that time that, as the door is almost shut, the group opens up on the ship.

Which does absolutely nothing, because the Distant Star has the hull of a gunship compared to its fellows. "Right," Adhar calls up behind you, "Let's get out of here. Raise those shields, please, in case they break out something meaner!"

Nadia is already in the pilots seat when Adhar makes his way forward and about has the ship ready to launch. "I'm strongly considering hitting them with sublight afterburns..." She muses once she hears him enter, "I cannot stand this planet." There's probably a fun story there. "Punching it." She drives the throttle forward and lurches them out of the hangar and out towards the stars.

"I was going to take a laser turret to them," he muses as he takes the support station, and the sky cures into space. "But let's keep an eye on the scanners in case this guy proves to be a bad loser."

Because that is -not- out of the realm of possibility.

"Your ship is slow as hell..." She grumbles, punching it to the limits and still it's taking entirely too long for her comfort. "See anything?" She glances over, once and then twice, to catch an eye on the scanners just in case she needs to go into some fancy flying.

"It is not," Adhar says balmily. "And nothing on scanners, no. Punching the coordinates for the meeting point into the navicomputer. Let's head that way."

Nadia raises her head as if she'll argue the point, but forgoes doing so with a grunt, "Fifteen minutes and we'll be out of system, we make it that far and we'll be good..." She highly doubts a low bit hustler like that has muscle outside the system.

"...we'll need to discuss how to better work together when we get back," he says as he inspects the instruments - no anger or accusation in his tone, mind you. "I'd like to mesh with you better in a crisis."

"What I hear you saying is, I want you to do things my way." Nadia shakes her head, "And that's a firm no." She pulls them out of orbit and in the oposite direction the usually travelled lane out of system, "My way works, consistently."

"Is that your experience with me so far?" He keeps his eyes fixed on the holographic displays. "Am I someone who makes demands of you at all times?"

"Not really, no." Nadia adjust their course and leans over to hit the hyperdrive once they've cleared the planet and its moon's gravwell. "I don't do things like that back there... proton grenades, gunfights with Twi'leks, all that shavik? Not what I do for a living. Not if I can avoid it."

"Not what I like to do either," Adhar says. "Sometimes you run into it, though. So what I'd like to do is, when we get back, see if we can't come to a middle on how to proceed in those situations, since we seem fairly situated on two different sides of the spectrum. I'm willing to be flexible."

"I'm less flexible..." Nadia admits, only relaxing once the stars start to stream past the viewport. Only then does she breath out a long sigh and slump into the seat. "But we can work on it, I guess."

"That's all I ask." He squints at the display. "Aha. I've got a sensor contact at the prescribed coordinates. I'm broadcasting a coded message now."

A moment later, the comms chimes. "Good. Let's get over there, dock, make our delivery, and get the kriff home."

Nadia brings them in, settles them down, and motions for Adhar to proceed. "I'm too tired to deal with anyone right now, think you can handle this one? I'd just as soon keep the ship prepped to take off."

"Of course." He sets up the navicomputer for autopilot. "Just relax, I'll take care of everything else."

And so he does. A mean-looking transport is waiting for the ship at the appropriate coordinates; Adhar handles the transfer, which takes next to no time upon completion of delivery, and soon is back with a small credit case in hand. "And we are paid," he chimes. "Take us home, Nadia."