Harrowing Intel
Since the very beginning of the New Republic, the Mothkari Crime Family had made its influence felt. Whenever a senator unexpectedly switched his vote, some suspected them to be involved and usually they weren't wrong. A protocol droid stood nearby as you discussed sensitive information? Crimelord Haro Mothkari would confront you with it the very next day. The droid gotra with all its calculated savagery and subtlety were the Mothkari's strongest and most profitable allies and the slicers operated all the way from Hollastin could penetrate the most secure subnets the Republic had to offer. No one's safety was guaranteed when they had something that the centuries old cybernetically-enhanced crimelord of the Mothkari wanted.
After the collapse of the Republic many feared the crime family would use this vacuum to free itself from the cartel's grasp. After all, the Supreme Mogul Nor'baal Desilijic himself had recently forced Haro to bend his knee and the tributes that the Hutt demanded would cripple any self-respecting crimelord. Yet, nothing had happened. It was a silence that, according to the Imperial Security Bureau, could only mean one thing: they were involved in something bigger.
Cipher Six hadn't been ready for an extraction yet, so the Pugio-class Imperial Frigate called the 'Haradan' was making a detour on its way to Nar Shaddaa. Their fueling stop? Hollastin. There at the fueling station, Commander Karn left his ship wearing commonplace Outer Rim clothes and took a shuttle transport to the planet's surface that housed over a billion people, even after the AMS outbreak in Hutt Space.
It took him the better part of an hour to get to the target building. Levik had a credchip pre-loaded with additional operational funds in his pocket, as well as a port scanner and a personav. There was no army of peacekeepers backing Levik, not a uniform and its authority to exploit to your benefit. Feeling rather nervous, he pressed the doorbell and moments later it opened to reveal black and blood-red N-series protocol droid. "Do you have an appointment?" it asked in a surprisingly human way that surprised Levik and yet, perhaps, it shouldn't have considering the Mothkari Crime Family's reputation.
"I do," Levik handed him a datapunch card and the droid regarded it for a moment before slotting it into a datapunch reader. Half a second later it's eyes flickered, "He's waiting," and it turned around, prompting the Imperial commander to follow.
They ascended stairs, then descended stairs in what seemed to be a derelicted building. Every now and then Levik seemed to register a SD-6 Hulk Infantry Droid standing in a nook or somewhere off the treaded path. Most of the tech so far seemed ancient.. and yet..
A few minutes of navigating what Levik guessed was a nearly ancient residential complex, they reached a durasteel door that seemed much more advanced than the rest. The N-series droid pressed a code into a nearby panel and then the door slid open to reveal what was essentiall a large room with dozens of droids with wires attached to their brains that went up into the ceiling. If anything this was the beating heart of whatever operation the Mothkari Crime Family was currently running and Levik couldn't wait to take a peek behind the curtains.
But then the N-series droid lead them to their right and through another set of durasteel doors where they were waited on by.. HARO MOTHKARI himself. His cybernetic eyes seemed to stare right through you as his massive droid frame was eerily similar to that of the SD-6 Hulk Infantry Droids they'd seen earlier. Perhaps it had once been just that, but over the centuries since it had definitely become more refined, more advanced, and definitely more scary.
"So this is who the Exchange sends?" Haro's mechanized voice said in what was essentially emotionless, yet due to its own horrific physique seemed very threatening regardless.
That ancient datapunch card had indeed been signed by the Troig Eccle'baal. Commander Karn had used his connections in the Taris Exchange to get a meeting with the Crimelord of a Crymorah Syndicate crime family. "Or rather, the Imperial Security Bureau?" the mechanized laughter that followed filled the room and its echo remained long after the cyborg appeared to have stopped.
Suddenly four SD-6 Hulk Infantry Droids appeared from all sides, surrounding the Imperial and the crimelord. "Take him away," Haro said as two of the droids approached a rather stupified Levik and their grapplers grabbed him by his shoulders and pushed him -rather violently- towards another door in the room.
The two Hulk-droids were dragging a stupified Commander Karn passed what seemed like slicer pods and droid command consoles until they finally entered another room. This one, too, filthy and covered in dust. There was only a single chair and one of the droids motioned for him to sit on it before they took position on either side of the door. Levik tried to straighten in tunic, but for some reason he couldn't and as the worry and panic increased he grabbed his golden lighter from his pockets and clenched his right hand around it. This was bad. This was really bad.
As he sat down -for he didn't know what else to do- the door slid open to reveal another human cyborg. Skin pale, almost seeming lifeless, but her modifications were much less severe than those of Haro. Levik had a suspicion that her cybernetic limbs, which she obviously seemed to have, were much more refined. "Hello Commander Levik Karn of the Imperial Security Bureau,", she smiled and her eyes -while seemingly cybernetic- had a lifelike feel to them. Was all of this to show off that the Mothkari Crime Family was moving with the times? That they made advancements not unlike the corporate factions? "Or should I say, business partner to Eccle'baal, or The Tarisian or, as you're known to some mercs on Corellia; 'The Commander'?" Levik's left eye twitched and he didn't think he'd be able to ever unclench his right hand from his lighter. How did she know all these things?
"Who are you?" he heard himself say despite the fact that that wasn't the question he really wanted to ask.
She produced a pack of cigarettes from behind her back, or perhaps she had been holding them the entire time, Levik simply couldn't be sure. "That does not matter," her voice was soft, feminine and pleasing to the ear. Yet, the way she said it made him think even her vocal chords had been altered in some way. This level of technology in criminals hands was worrisome and yet.. why would they have hidden this from their new cartel overlords? What was the-
-her hand went over Levik's clenched right fist and seemingly without much trouble she managed to straing his muscles enough to unclench it and reveal the lighter she apparently knew he carried. He let her take it and light up one of the cigarettes in the pack before blowing the scented smoke into Levik's face. "Tell me, Levik Karn. Do you ever notice protocol droids?"
Levik thought echoes of from the past, his subordinates looking at him with dumb expressions, asking him what they should do. How should he know? He understood none of this. None of this made any sense. "I know you're not one of them," he replied in a surprised, yet poorly delivered, evasion. The cyborg, without any facial expression or other kind of sign that she had even registered his reply, put one of her cigarettes between his lips and lit it. Instintively Levik sucked air through it and immediately knew that he -really- should not have. This wasn't a normal cigarette.. this was synthetic Glitterryll.
"Why did the Imperial Security Bureau suddenly take notice of us?" she asked now as his head began to feel dizzy and his vision blurred. Her voice was nice, he found, it was pleasant to listen to. Soothing, calming and it made him want to tell her everything. It was almost like she was a Siren for telling the truth.
The cigarette dangled as Levik's jaw began to tremble. It seemed useless to resist. It seemed inevitable. All he could really do was tell her, "Insurgencies," he revealed, "Matching modus operandi." It took him all the willpower he could muster not to utter the codename of the operation or indeed the name of the suspected mastermind behind it all; the Oracle. "Suspected Mothraki involvement."
Unbeknownst to Levik, the Siren's eyes suddenly flickered as she seemed to relay that information.
"Tell me," the female cyborg whispered as Levik's mind faded, "Tell me everything." and he wanted to, he realized. His brain yearned for it as a rhythmic chanting seemed to formate in his head. He felt like he could feel the data going from the planetary HoloNet antenna's straight to this block of seemingly abandoned buildings, right into the heads of the droids and cyborgs that the Mothraki Crime Family employed to scour the Net and find dirt on whoever their current target was. He felt the cold methodic appraoch. The business mind behind the invasion of privacy..
"Republic collapsed" Levik continued, "the Alliance collapsed." and yet others equally ineffective had not. "Suspected Mothraki involvement," he improvised now, stating not the official suspicion of the Imperial Security Bureau but that of the commander himself. "To prevent the Empire is next," he adlipped, "Investigate on Hollastin." His own words were muttered or whispered, barely audible above the constant drums he heard in of the data going in and out of the Mothraki Crime Family's headquarters.
The female cyborg stepped back from him and removed the cigarette from her own lips in order to flick some of the ashes aside, "You chose the wrong cover, Levik."
Levik couldn't help but take another drag. Maybe it was force of habit? Maybe somehow he thought that taking in more glitterryll would help him figure out how to get out of his predicament. Standing a few feet away from him, the female cyborg's eyes flickered violently. "We have no interest in doing business with the Exchange," she shook her head and one of the SD-6 Hulk Infantry Droids by the door started moving and its integrated repeating blaster cannons started to aim at the Imperial Commander.
The repeater began to turn slowly, heating up as it did, but then the cyborg gave the droid a soundless signal and the repeater was lowered. It turned slower now until it disengaged completely. "Last chance," her voice was enticing him to answer truthfully. He felt safe, like he could confide in... were those the voices of his former subordinates again? Why were they in his head? Wait, where was she. This wasn't the bridge of the Haradan. Where was Haro Mothkari, the crimelord he was supposed to meet, courtesy of the Troig Eccle'baal...
"Artefact Exchange," he muttered, along that line of thought, "Vault on Raxus." The one he had robbed and now the Troig made a good commission selling his copies of a Book of Shadows. One the Mothkari Crime Family clearly had no interest or need to obtain. "I have information on," a great deal of things, actually. Imperial, Exchange, Jedi, Sith, Artefacts and even "dataplagues." The Siren's eyes flickered.
Suddenly the door behind her opened to reveal Haro Mothkari himself as he walked straight up to the spiced out Commander. "Spit it out," his haunting mechanized voice said and for some reason it returned Levik to the present as he blinked a few times, noticed the cigarette dangling from his lips, his own trembling jaw and the two cyborgs standing in front of him. One a giant monster whose cybernetics were all variations of heavy blaster weapons and repeaters, the other clearly focused on blending into society yet they were both clearly more droid than sentient.
"Sector Ranger Monitoring Dataplague," Levik heard himself mutter. The Exchange had hired a slicer to retrieve the by-now decade old dataplague meant to infiltrate and provide countless access points to monitor (criminal) behavior from. According to intelligence from the Imperial Security Bureau, this would fit in with the Mothkari's modus operandi, but instead the giant crimelord once again started his mechanized laugh and it drummed into Levik's ears as it echoed through the confined space. The Siren was more subtle; "That dataplague has been found on Crymorah systems a decade ago. It was stripped, re-engineered, used and discarded." In other words they deemed it as outdated tech and had found a better way to monitor and link up. Kriff, was it already time to ask the Force for help?
"Shard in pocket," Levik tried and he slowly went for it, hoping that his movement would not trigger an attack salvo from either Haro or the repeating cannons of the Hulk-droids. Siren's eyes flickered again, but they all remained motionless as Levik pulled the shard from his pocket and held it up. "What is on the shard, Levik?" the female cyborg asked, clearly wary of getting hit with a dataplague. In response, the Commander took another drag of the synthetic glitterryll and rode a high too strong and destructive to answer. He didn't hear Haro Mothkari chuckle as the N-series protocol droid entered the room, no doubt hailed by the Siren through their subnet, took the shard from Levik's limp hand and slotted it into a datapad. "Credits," it turned the datapad around to show it to the two cyborgs and Haro's chuckle stifled. "Wake him up."
Even after removing the cigarette from his lips and injecting him with a cocktail of whatever was in Systech's anti-withdrawal adrenal designed to combat the effects of spice overdoses and the addictive cravings, it took a full ten minutes for Levik to really wake up and regain all his senses. He was lying beside the chair on the dusty, somewhat rusted, durasteel floor of the small room and when he turned to look at the door, both the Siren and the Crimelord still stood there, watching him with their eyes flickering from red, to yellow, to white.
The Siren's eyes stopped flickering first and as she noticed Levik was awake, smiled and motioned for him to sit back on his chair. "You should have started with the credits," she said it like they had given him a choice. Levik knew better than to argue with her or accuse them of turning him into a glitterryll addict just for the kriff of it, however, and he forced his strained, tired and sweating body back on the chair. "Why did you come here, Commander Karn," she flicked up the golden lighter of the Eriadu Naval Academy. A personal affectation of Levik's that she didn't seem inclined to return to him in the slightest. Her head titled sideways as she look at him in his rather pathetic state of being.
"The Empire is being targeted. Someone from a central point seems to be moving cells like pawns in a game of Dejarik." he couldn't for the life of him understand why he was being so frank with her. He didn't even know her name, but as he spoke she seemed to really listen to him. Her eyes were understanding, her skin appeared soft to the touch and her voice had been soothing and comforting like Levik hadn't experienced she he fell down the stairs on Eriadu as a kid and.. -Flick- his lighter closed and their eyes met. There was something really unnerving about her. She was the exact opposite of Haro Mothkari. An unnerving sign of technical advancement.
Suddenly Haro stepped closer and the ground seemed to shake whenever one of his feet came down to the floor. "Not us," he declared and the Hulk droids started moving, too, moving out of the room now. "She will contact you," and then he turned and walked out of the room after the Hulk droids. For the first time since he had arrived here, he was alone with just the female cyborg. "This has to do with artefacts, Commander Karn, and we don't deal in them." That was true, Levik figured, for the two main criminal syndicates trading in Sith artefacts were the Exchange and the Crimson Dawn. "The credits will keep you alive today, but they are not enough. I will contact you, soon." he nodded as if he understood, but really he didn't it. What intel had his credits bought him? All this spend and it was only enough to allow him to leave unharmed? Was that really how the Mothkari did business? "Follow me," the cyborg continued, flicking the lighter open and shut as if it was a way to ensure him to follow and so it did. Levik once again forced his strained, exhausted and drenched-in-sweat body to move and slowly he waddled back through the Mothkari headquarters.
Ancient model droids and cybernetically enhanced aliens looked at him as he passed. More had come out of the shadows than when he had followed the N-series protocol droid inside. Curious, perhaps, to what had transpired.
Eventually, after having descended and ascended a great deal of stairs as they traversed through an old abandoned housing complex, they reached the door through which he could exit the compound. Almost expectingly Levik turned to the cyborg and held out his hand, "my lighter?" he asked and immediately felt an anger and regret that his body was too exhausted for to manifest. The Siren held up both hands, no lighter. Then the door closed and he was standing alone on a street somewhere on the planet of Hollastin. A lot of credits poorer, sans his affectation and without having gained actionable intelligence.
Last edited: