A bit earlier...
The chill of the refrigeration unit clung to the air around Zira as she finished dragging the large and heavy bundle wrapped in cloth and plastic into the only small room that could be cooled to much lower than room temperature on this ship. Her breath expelled from her lips in great clouds of fog as she finally set the bundle down, grunting with the effort.
The captain was heavier than he looked...
Zira took one long breath of frigid air, the lungful making her chest ache. It was as still and heavy as her heart in this room where she looked down into the face of the late captain, now pallid and lifeless...
"Kark it all...I wish I had something to say..." she murmured as she crouched over his body. "...I wish...I wish I had somewhere better to put you."
A hand came up to her eyes as she realized they were slowly stinging where moisture had gathered. She pulled her jacket around her to better ward off the cold and for a moment just sat there in silence. Here in this icebox it was just her, the dead, and the truth...
Zira was no stranger to loss. Death and sacrifice were old comrades to the Rebel Alliance; an organization that often times was forced to measure success in the amount of bodies it took to achieve it. She'd lost friends, she'd lost family...and so had her parents. Despite all the speeches she'd heard growing up about the importance of being willing to give that which was "necessary" which were always followed by such comforting phrases as "those who die never really leave us," it never got any easier. It never ever did, it wounded her each and every time.
She had never known the captain, only heard about him through others...and the first time they had been within earshot of each other the last thing he heard was probably her screaming out in horror as he was gunned down. She closed her eyes. Even behind her eyelids she could see him there on the loading ramp in the rain of the night. She could see his eyes as the light died in them and he fell to the ground. She could see—
A hand was suddenly placed on her shoulder. Zira didn't need to look to know the reassuring touch of her uncle. She hastily wiper her cheeks as she realized tears had begun to flood down them.
"Zira I'm...I'm sorry." He began, he said sympathetically. "I didn't know someone had brought him aboard. If I had then you wouldn't have—"
Zira gently pulled away from the grip Jirano had on her shoulder and got to her feet , standing next to the corpse.
"Don't worry about it, uncle." She intoned, her gaze never left the floor. "I didn't know either. One of the others must have drug him aboard after we got on. I found him on a bench near engineering."
She bent down and grabbed the edge of the tarp and sheets she had wrapped the body in and laid them over the body, covering it completely as it lay on the floor of the refrigeration unit.
"One of those damned mercenary types must have scooped him up before we took off, probably so they could go through his pockets." She sneered. "Vultures."
"I understand how you feel." Jirano began. "But if this group is to get through this trial then we have to--"
"Do you?" Zira asked, suddenly looking up into Jirano's eyes angrily. "Do you really know how this feels?"
There was a moment of silence as the two simply looked into each other's eyes.
"I do." Jirano said after a moment and continued the stare. Zira couldn't detect a lie in her Uncle's voice, her gaze softened and she looked back down towards the ground.
"You don't have to apologize." He added after a moment, cutting Zira off as she opened her mouth to speak and catching her confused look. "Humans are interesting creatures," he explained. "They can experience a range of emotions in quick succession but they almost always telegraph them in noticeable ways."
"Didn't I tell you not to use your head-tails on me like...a long time ago?" Zira snorted. Despite having a Nautolan in her family she was still sometimes caught off guard by his peoples' strange ability to pick up pheromones in the air that gave them a great deal of information about the emotional state of different creatures.
"Yes." Jirano smirked. "But considering that would be like me asking you to not use your eyes to see in front of you I elected to politely lie to you and continue doing it anyway."
Despite herself and the immediate circumstances, Zira chuckled. "Fair enough, fish boy."
"Please don't call me that."
Another chuckle...and silence returned to the room. Shelves of basic staples and certain chemicals that needed to be kept cold lined the walls and above them the vents beat a steady hum into the ice cold air.
"You know I didn't do what I did out of malice, right?" Jirano offered after a few moments. "You know everything that I've done since we left the fleet was to keep you safe, right?"
"Yeah." Zira replied numbly.
"You know that's my sworn duty, right? I gave your father a promise. I told him that no matter what happens I would protect--"
"I know, uncle. I don't blame you for the captain's death or anything I'm just..."
"Frustrated?"
"Yeah."
The vents above them wheezed in sympathy as the next cooling cycle started.
"We couldn't save him," Zira started, "but the least we could do is make sure he gets back to his next of kin...or gets a proper burial...or something you know?"
Jirano nodded. Neither of them knew the captain but he knew that Zira was very sentimental when it came to all those who had been a part of the Rebel Alliance.
"I have an idea." He said suddenly after a few moments.
A call on the long range communicator that Zira's father had given him for emergencies, a quiet enough landing in the altogether lukewarm hospitality of the locals that he honestly wasn't sure why he didn't expect given the reputation of the port, and a short walk through the smoggy city streets had led Jirano to this particular moment. It had been a simple enough request; after all, a former agent for Alliance Intelligence was bound to have contacts all over the galaxy and certainly on such hotly mercantile ground as the heart of Hutt Space. It was a simple matter of calling in the right favors and greasing the right palms. Long after the group had left the ship to the tender care of Zimbar some small band of teamsters from some nondescript group of movers would show up at that particular docking bay with all the proper paperwork indicating that a package needed to be taken to from the ship to somewhere else on the planet.
A couple of said teamsters would enter and the same would leave just a few minutes later with a nondescript crate carrying the mortal remains of one Vance Kest loaded aboard a cargo sled. From there only the man code named Twilight would have any idea where the body would go but it brought Jirano and he was sure Zira as well peace of mind that a comrade in arms had been taken care of even in death.
Jirano's head was awash with these and other thoughts and he had been mainly quiet since leaving the ship at the landing pad despite interjecting into the group's conversation here or there when necessary. It was only the robotic voice of Roger that broke him from his reverie in only the way that a sound that reminded one of a past long buried and painful to recall could.
But still...had this droid actually made...a joke?
A halfway funny one at that?
Jirano snorted more out of surprise than anything else.
"Do you two even know each other's names?" He asked the pair, looking from the droid to the Ewok and back to the droid. Both of them eyed each other warily.
"Alright, listen." Jirano said as he raised his hands in placation, seamlessly slipping into the role of the mediator that he had so long trained himself to be in these situations. "I know the trip here was tense for you two specifically but surely you can see that there were circumstances beyond anyone's control that may have been the root of the offense?"
Jirano looked to the Ewok. "Ego, was it?" He tested, and hearing no protest, continued. "Ego, my friend...this 'Sir Droid' has a name. He is called Roger2 and while he is with us I would prefer it for the sake of this group and our continued business that you would refer to him as such."
At this Jirano turned to the droid.
"And as for you," he began, his voice firm but not assertive, "Ego here is hardly a child, he is obviously fully grown for one of his kind and you should address him and speak to him as such."
Jirano sighed a bit, he remembered when one of his old masters had to give him a similar sort of dressing down in another life...but he had been nothing but a child then! Were these two really no less than children?
"I would also suggest you apologize to each other for whatever offense you caused the other, I doubt it was intentional for either party."
Silence now reigned over the group as Jirano stopped speaking, it was only the interjection of Zira that confirmed anyone had heard him at all.
"Wow, you managed to scold a battle droid and a walking teddy bear." She snorted, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets. "That's a new record for you."
"That walking teddy bear has a flamethrower." Jirano stated simply with a heavily lidded glance in her direction.
"Ah, so he does." She said awkwardly. "I retract the teddy bear statement. Good to meet you, Ego." She finished lamely and looked down at the ground.
"He does bring up a good point though." Jirano continued, stroking his chin thoughtfully as they all stood there in the parts shop wondering about what they should do next.
"The teddy bear? Err...I mean Ego! Sorry. Sorry. Kark. I'll shut up now." Zira spluttered.
"Yes he does. According to what Nira over there just said those holo tapes could be our ticket to an audience with the Hutt who runs this city."
"How exactly does that help us?" Albeddan spoke up for the first time in several minutes "We need credits, not to schmooze with crime lords."
"Well, one can lead to the other." Jirano insisted.
"Do you have a point?" Asked Shakka from her spot leaning on one of the junk shelves.
"I do, actually." Jirano said with only a hint of annoyance in his voice. "The Hutts who become powerful on Nar Shadda are cruel but also very vain. I don't know anything about this Gordulla but I'm willing to bet if we offer these tapes as tribute like Ego said we can at least get his attention."
"Then what?" Asked Zira, piping up from her self imposed exile from the conversation.
"Then we...well...We present ourselves as a capable but yet to be well known band of..." At this Jirano paused to swallow, his discomfort evident even as he spoke the idea aloud. "...Mercenaries...looking for a break into the big leagues so to speak."
"But we barely know each other..." Zira pointed out, squinting and trying to follow her uncle's logic.
"He doesn't need to know that." Jirano said with a smirk. "All the Hutt will know is that we came a long way with something we knew he'd like and then offer our services to him once we have his momentary favor with a shiny bauble that isn't of much use to us otherwise."
There was another moment of silence as the others seemed to consider this.
"Think of it this way," Jirano pressed on. "We could spend weeks trying to scrounge up enough credits by working with the lowlife drug peddlers and death dealers on this moon and there's a good chance something bad will happen to us or Zimbar will choose to keep our ship before we can pay him back. If we go straight to the top of the food chain here we might just make enough in credits and clout to get off this rock before it kills us."
"Go straight up to the head honcho and tell him we're hot shit and we want a job?" Zira paraphrased with an incredulous chuckle. She punched Jirano playfully in the shoulder.
"Holy hell, that's ballsy! Didn't think you had it in you. I like this plan."
"Yes well..." Jirano rubbed the back of his neck. "The worst he can do is say is no. Even if he refuses us, and my gut says he wont seeing as Hutt cartels are always looking for someone capable to do their dirty work for them, we've still made our obeisances to the local power broker so at the very least we wont have to worry about running afoul of any of his enforcers. If we play our cards right he might even take our cargo off our hands for us."
"Great." Zira summarized. "One of us is going to have to go back to the ship to get the holotapes, though."