A small bit more chit chat about their options was abruptly cut off by the sound of blaster fire echoing down the street. All heads snapped around at the sudden, jarring noise as it was quickly followed by angry yelling in about a dozen different languages.
"Oh shit!" Zira exclaimed as she craned her neck and took a few steps out into the middle of the street to get a better look at where the noise was coming from. "Did someone start a gang fight down there?"
"We're not staying to find out." Jirano stated definitively as he walked past Zira and grabbed her arm to get her to follow him instead of standing in the open where she could accidentally be shot by a stray round. All around them the people on the street were beginning to run this way and that, ducking into alleys or into storefronts or just away from the cacophony in general.
"I suggest we head back to the ship." Jirano beckoned to the rest of them. "We don't have coin for Nira's salvage and we really don't want to get caught up in whatever disagreement is going on down there."
There was a quick chorus of agreement from the others in the group as the flash of red and green blaster fire could be seen arcing along the side streets, bathing the dark shadows of the city in quick bursts of eerie glows.
"Damn, and here I was thinking I might get some target practice in." Zira bemoaned flippantly.
"Not if I can help it." Jirano promised.
The walk back to the hangar where they'd left the ship had been quiet enough but the sight that greeted them all was puzzling in the extreme. Someone had laid out Zimbar on the deck of the hangar and Karl was nowhere to be found. While the rest of the group either stood about or, like Jirano, went aboard the ship to make sure everything they had come to the planet with was still there Zira found herself standing over the unconscious form of Zimbar with Albedan and looking around confusedly.
"Did uh...did Karl beat the shit out of Zimbar here and then just kark off without telling anyone?" She asked as she bent over Zimbar to make sure he was still breathing.
"No clue." Albedan said with a shrug. "But I honestly can't blame him if he did. Man's a slug."
With a quick few seconds work Zira was able to liberate the device clasped around the hanger owner's wrist and pocket it while he lay dead to the world around him. She had seen him use it to control the hangar's autoturrets and a hunch told her he probably used it to control the access to other things around the hangar too.
"Hey uh...keep an eye on him for me would ya? I'm gonna go take a look around his office to make sure he...uuhhhh...didn't try to steal anything from us. Yeah, that."
Another shrug from Albedan as he stood by with his weapon in his hands "Suit yourself."
A silent ride up the elevator at one end of the hangar made possible by a little manipulation of Zimbar's wrist device and Zira was standing in the man's apartment. It was...a lot sparser than she'd expected, honestly. Most of the people like Zimbar she'd ever known were creatures of strange comforts and perverted tastes. Maybe this guy really did need to extort everyone that passed through his hangar for credits if the bare walls and spartan furnishings of this small domicile were what passed for the owner's income. A protocol droid stumbled out of some dark little alcove of the office and initially protested Zira's presence until she insisted that Zimbar had told her to come up the elevator to fetch something for him. The droid obviously wasn't programmed to detect lies all that well because it easily seemed to accept this and then offer Zira a refreshment which she dutifully declined.
A quick examination of the rooms within the apartment revealed nothing interesting besides a locked safe underneath the man's bed that she had no hope of getting into without the combination to the lock. Just as she was about to give up and leave, however, she walked by the man's desk and spotted something that grabbed her attention...Yes...there on a stack of papers haphazardly scattered about the desk was the insignia of the Vorn Syndicate emblazoned next to some small bit of data. Further examination revealed the paper to be a set of manifests of ships currently within Zimbar's hangar, one of which seemed to be a Vorn freighter carrying "five hundred liters of kamjo sauce."
"Yeah, okay." Zira snorted derisively to herself as she read that. "The Vorn are trading in kamjo sauce and I'm a karking Nerf herder."
It did make her think though. If they weren't carrying kamjo sauce then what were they carrying? It was in that moment that she suddenly remembered that the Vorn had been the group that had been responsible for making off with all credits that the banking clan of Orn Duront had to their name...surely this couldn't be the ship that they were carrying the loot on with the "kamjo sauce" as a flimsy cover for what they were actually hauling?
That thought in itself was tantalizing enough to make Zira take out a data pad from her jacket and use it to get a quick set of pics of all the ship manifests she could find on Zimbar's desk. There would be no way she or anyone in her group could really act on this possibility but the idea that there could be a freighter with hundreds of thousands of credits sitting in its hold just a few hundred meters away was simply too good of a bit of info to not copy down in case it could be used later.
She had grown up around rebels who all had their secrets for better or worse...and if there was one thing her father had taught her it was that in this galaxy information was power...
The deed done, Zira scampered back down the elevator and walked confidently back over to where she had left Albedan next to the still recovering Zimbar.
"Is he awake yet?" She asked, approaching.
"I think he's starting to come around." The older man replied looking down at the pudgy ball of a man as he blinked and spluttered, trying to come to.
"Hey you, sleazeball. You alive?" Zira asked as she prodded Zimbar with her boot. The man grunted and cursed as he tried to rise to a sitting position.
"Listen, I dunno who did this to you or why but you're real lucky we came back along when we did otherwise who knows what might have happened?" Zira made a show of tapping the hilt of the blaster at her side thoughtfully as she looked down at the hangar owner. She narrowed her eyes and looked directly into his bleary pupils.
"Would have been a real shame if we had to tell ol' Gordulla that you were the one who let his latest special delivery get stolen from right under his nose, wouldn't it?"
The sudden doubt and fear that entered Zimbar's expression at the mention of the Hutt's name was exactly what Zira had been hoping for. Her face became hard as stone as she continued to stare down at the prostrate man.
"I suggest you think on that as we go give the boss his package. Seems like a good trade to me...your hide for eight hundred or so credits?"
She waved Albedan with her as she walked away from Zimbar. "Like I said," she called back as she was heading towards the ship "think about it."
When Zira and Albedan got to the ship's ramp out of earshot of Zimbar the older merc leaned over to her.
"You really think its wise to try and intimidate him? He's holding our only way off this mudball."
"Hmmm...maybe not." She admitted. "I'm working on a hunch though. He just seems like a bully and the thing about bullies is when they're not in a position of power in the transaction they don't tend to be all that scary."
The lair of Gordulla the Hutt was the tallest and most ostentatious skyscraper in this sector of the city...because of course it was.
Well...to call it a simple skyscraper would be a bit of a misnomer. Jirano looked up its many levels from the ground as the group crossed the long entry walkway through an expansive courtyard that began at a massive hydraulically controlled gate that was the only way to enter a complex that was surrounded on all sides by an almost twenty foot high wall of durasteel and plascrete.
To say that this place was a fortress would be an understatement.
At several levels where the skyscraper sections ended and the structure gradually became thinner and thinner as it extended into the smog filled night sky of the city Jirano could make out the squat form of heavy gun emplacements that dark silhouettes patrolled the gantries of. The extended partitions of darkly tinted but massive windows and viewing screens loomed above them, hiding the occupants inside who were no doubt looking down upon the city from scenes of decadence and luxury most on the streets would never see in all their days. Jirano scowled at the sight; there was no more perfect image representing how the powerful held themselves over the masses; watching them crawl along from behind and above those they paid to do violence on their behalf, each forming half of a parasitic but symbiotic relationship.
The courtyard was littered with tattooed thugs and young gang prospects alike, congregated in small groups, watching them as they passed and snickering as they made jokes to each other. One of them, perhaps egged on by his compatriots, accosted Shakka loudly and openly, propositioning the Twi'lek in a manner that Jirano could only describe as...exceedingly crude. He was about to intercede on her behalf when Shakka quite effortlessly and smoothly rebuffed the youth with a pithy enough phrasing that the rest of his friends all burst out in laughter and the interloper retreated, his ego summarily executed by Shakka's sharp tongue.
Jirano had to admit, she was good at that. He realized in that moment that it was likely she had developed such responses after years of being accosted in random on the street in such a manner...But that business with Zimbar when they had first landed...that was different. Jirano knew the slight sensation of someone in close proximity reaching out into the Force...he just never expected to sense it ever again. And the fact that it had been summoned by this enigmatic Twi'lek...well...it was a surprise, to be sure, but Jirano didn't know yet if it was a welcome one.
"Everyone be on their best behavior, please." Jirano cautioned the group as they guards outside the main doors to the inner complex keyed a code into an electronic interface near them and opened the portal to this underworld. "Remember that we are guests to the great Gordulla the Hutt and as such we should try to be as respectful as possible."
"Damn, and here I was thinking I wouldn't need to remember how to curtsy." Zira snorted.
"I'm serious." Jirano shot back. "We're here to pay our obeisances and offer our skills to someone who is very powerful on this moon. Try to let me do the talking."
"Okay moooooom." Zira mocked with another chuckle. "Gas planet, you could somehow make the Kessel Run boring, I swear."
The lobby was filled with yet more guards, all armed with sheathed vibro blades and blunt weapons, Jirano noticed. He thought it strange that none of them appeared to be carrying any sort of blaster of any kind as soon as they came within the walls of the building.
"You're here to petition Lord Gordulla, correct?" A human in dark plas steel armor asked them, approaching from a large lobby desk where computer interfaces and floating holo screens were lined.
"That is correct." Roger suddenly intoned in his flat, electronic voice. "This unit seeks audience with one Gordulla the Hutt."
"Big elevator at the end of the hall." The guard said, tilting his head in the direction of the hallway. "Can't miss it."
"Gotta say the entry process seems so...casual for someone so important." Albedan quipped as the group made its way down the hallway alone.
"Don't fool yourself. Every move we're making is being watched." Shakka said quietly with pointed glance around herself. "Hutts are nothing if not paranoid about those who would try to steal from them."
"You speak as though you have some experience." Jirano mused.
"I might." Shakka replied with an inclination of her head. "I have some experience with...quite a few things, actually."
"He does have a point though." Zira piped up. "I mean...they didn't even take our weapons."
There was a chuckle as they approached the elevator doors and a masked and helmeted guard strode out of a small alcove to its side to key in another few runes on the pad next to the entrance.
"That's because this whole building is encased in a dampening field that renders all blasters inert." He stated in thickly accented galactic basic. "You couldn't shoot them off in here even if you wanted to."
Zira's eyes widened in surprise. "Holy..." she breathed. "For a building this big? The power draw must be astronomical!"
The guard shrugged as the elevator doors opened. "No idea. Way above my pay grade. I advise you don't test if the field works or not in here though. The last idiots to do that ended up as one of the boss' new displays."
"Consider us duly notified." Jirano said diplomatically as they filed into the elevator and the doors closed.
There were no buttons within this elevator was the first thing Jirano noticed. It seemed that this lift had only one destination after it left the bottom floor. Sure enough, it took the course of a few minutes for it to rise to the very most top level of the building, far above the streets below and practically on the summit of a mountain of durasteel.
The scene that greeted them all as the doors open was out of some lurid dream. Dimly lit and smoky in the extreme all manner of lowlifes, mercenaries, cut throats, and gangers filled the room in small gatherings all about a vast penthouse suite. A menagerie of guards, identically armored in dark plasteel as the ones on the bottom floor had been cavorted with alien dancers as serving droids roamed the hall with trays of strange and fantastic drinks that a nobleman would find hard to acquire. Slow, droning music filled the air played live by an assortment Bith musicians and their astromech drummer perched in a corner to one side of the room and great clouds of vapor smoke were exhaled from revelers who were busy giddily laughing with their friends while seated in large chairs and smoking from pneumatic tubes that snaked from bubbling glass lamps.
"So this is how the upper crust lives." Zira said with no short amount of awe in her voice as she grabbed a luminescent blue Bantha Blaster from one of the trays of a passing serving droid. "Hell, I could get used to these kinds of trips."
"Stay focused." Jirano admonished. "Remember why we're here." He reminded her as they made their way through the crowds, wary of questing eyes or potential pickpockets alike.
The lighting of this den flowed and ebbed from soft sources embedded in the floors and the walls and the ceiling. It slowly churned from one color to another in an almost psychedelic display. One could definitely get lost in this world of sensation, vice and money, Jirano thought as his gaze swept over several patrons who lazily slumped in cushioned seats around tables laden with drugs of a variety he could only speculate...and it appeared they often did.
As they approached the center of the den that slowly rose over a series of several flat steps to be above the rest of the room, Jirano began to see curious glass displays set up in small corners and on squat podiums all about the area...here was the pearl of a great Krayt Dragon suspended in lights behind panes of thick but transparent glass. Another display showed the ruin of a weapon found in a great tomb of an ancient Sith civilization in some far flung corner of the galaxy. These and dozens more dotted the den, each one more curious and dated than the last.
"What the..." Zira swore as she walked past one in particular that caught her eye. It had no plaque in front of it like the others that explained what it was but inside was something truly...grisly. A human skull seemingly dipped in gold and covered in precious gemstones with gigantic sapphires set in the eye sockets stared back at her. It was then she noticed this wasn't the only head trophy on display in the den and in fact this was just one in a large ring of such displays...not just of human heads either but of skulls of many types of sentient peoples.
"You were saying?" Albedan quipped from next to her. She didn't reply.
Finally, after minutes of wandering through the massive hall, Jirano finally found his target. There laid across an absolutely gigantic and luxuriously furnished throne was the massive form of a Hutt that could only be Gordulla. Across him lay harems of scantily clad beauties, one of which was coyly feeding him lujka fruits from a vine she held in her hands. The throne was guarded by the hulking form of two Gamorrean bodyguards, each holding a massive greataxe in their sausage like fingers. Jirano stepped forward to make his way onto the raised dais in front of the throne to present himself to Gordulla but was immediately stopped by a porcine guard who placed a hand on Jirano's chest and was about to push him back when the protocol droid standing next to Gordulla raised its mechanical voice in a flat tone.
"The mighty Gordulla bids you welcome and inquires why you approach his seat, stranger."
Well the droid was good at diplomacy, Zira had to give it that. She understood Huttese and knew that the Hutt had really said "Ask this Mylock driver who the hell he thinks he is."
"Your excellency." Jirano began with a bow as the Gamorrean stepped away and the Nautolan stepped forwards, staying at a respectable distance. "I apologize for intruding upon your revelry. My name is Jirano and my group and I have come only to pay tribute to the lord of this lovely city."
The crowd in a wide range around the dais and throne had become hushed to watch the scene in front of them. Gordulla, impassive and seemingly bored, reached a corpulent hand into a liquid filled jar on a table next to him and pulled a squealing aquatic creature out of it before forcing the thing's head into his gaping maw and clenching it from its body with a twist and sudden jerk. It took all of Jirano's strength to remain impassive as the dump of fear and despair pheromones the creature had given off in its last moments almost overpowered his Nautolan senses. Thankfully, the excruciating moment passed and Ego dutifully stepped forwards to stand next to him with their gift held above his head for Gordulla to see and the brightly packaged box of holo tapes in their original casings shone in the dim light.
A familiar twinkle and shape caught Jirano's eyes as he quickly took note of all his surroundings now that he was on an elevated position in the room. Yet another glass display stood upon this platform, mere feet from where Gordulla sat which held in a suspension field the familiar and haunting form of a lightsaber's hilt. A memory threatened to overtake Jirano in that moment where the head biting hadn't and it was only Zira's timely hiss that snapped him from the daze.
"Uncle...uncle?!"
Jirano cleared his throat, waving a gentle dismissal to his niece. "We understand that his highness is a collector of interesting and exotic curios and so thought these would be an excellent candidate for a gift to such a deserving host." He bowed again as Ego handed the tapes to one of the Gamorrean guards to bring it before Gordulla. The Hutt raised his other hand and in it wielded some sort of strange ritualistic looking staff blade which he used to motion his guard forwards and place the holotapes before him.