Black Mambo

[Arage Bao]

We are roughly between the Helska and Sernpidal system here.

Here means the Red Measure a space station that has been constructed by construction initiatives under my control. I always liked to be prepared and in this instance I think it paid off rather well, we have everything we need for a prolonged expedition out there.

They told me it was impossible. That it was crazy and unfeasible, but Anja and me showed them the error in their judgement.

A month ago we penetrated the hyperspace disturbance that surrounds our Galaxy. Vector Prime… apparently we weren’t the first to use those coordinates looking at the feedback we reserved while traveling.

Point is… we found it.

And it’s going to change everything.

 

[Arage Bao]

First order of business is stocking up on everything we need and then load it up. I am talking about the usual things here, enough food and water to get us there and back, medical supplies if something unfortunate happens, fuel… that might be a problem - I am considering bringing in two ships at the least, one dedicated to our fuel reserves, but it’s a tricky one. We don’t want to put too much attention on what we are doing here right now.

No, no. Better have two ships and not need the fuel, than get stranded in the middle of the journey… we have no idea how much the vault station has shifted its trajectory over the centuries.

Could be theoretically anywhere right now, good thing we have the data from the ExGal listening post. Would have been impossible to do without it.

 

[Arage Bao]

Got reminded about the interesting acquisition we managed to get a week ago. Peregrine; size of a frigate with the speed of an agile freighter, Levantine-class. The Levantine Coalition got disbanded two months back. Some of the remnants got caught up with the Silver Jedi, they be calling themselves the Silver Coalition now, I ain’t much of a fan when it comes to the Silver Order, but I suppose someone’s gotta do the dirty work at the Rim.

Point is… I still have my good ol’ contacts around their old worlds. And with the old Coalition gone, those contacts didn’t have much of a moral conundrum to ship me some of the old gear the Sanctum used to employ.

Couple of ships here, some equipment in bulk there. The usual things.

 

[Arage Bao]

It does remind me of how well equipped the Sanctum had been back in the day. They never had been much of an expansionary force, but if they ever wanted to… they probably would have been able to kick some ass.

I think what we can do is strip the hangars of one of those Peregrines, then bulk order a bunch of those Savant-class cargo containers from Silk. That should get us all the storage space we need for our supplies.

Question is only what other ship is gonna head the expedition. I got a few ideas, but nothing solid yet.

 

[Arage Bao]

Had to wake up early today.

The Red Measure ain’t exactly the most comfortable station out there. In a lot of ways it was very comparable to the Shokita that was being produced by MandalMotors at mass, it was just as easy to expand on, switching in other departments if the need was there.

Measure had a few things that were beneficial in this location: limited refitting capabilities, docking bays for a lot of sub-capital ships and even two places were capital ships to a certain degree could lock on and hangar bays that were large enough to be filled with anything and basically everything.

But yeah, had to wake up early. My lads are getting restless hanging around on the Measure, it wasn’t exactly a first-class entertainment area and there was still a large journey ahead.

 

[Arage Bao]

Alec suggested that I would give ‘em some time off while we sort this thing. It… might be a good idea. I could get a few transports to move my boys to one of the nearby outposts the Exchange- the Khavern Group has established.

If memory serves right at least one of ‘em has an entertainment sector. Most important thing is that the workers there all work for me and know a thing or two about staying quiet, so loose tongues won’t be a major problem.

I gotta think about it, but Alec hasn’t been wrong yet.

Well... that wasn't exactly true. Alec's been plenty wrong in the past- one only had to look at the Hutt mess to figure that one out. The amount of wheeling and dealing it had taken to clean her record, to remove the mark on her head after her little stunt with that statue?

Unbelievable.

She still owes me for that - I should probably collect sometime soon.

 

[Arage Bao]

Got a bruise where my eye used to be. Apparently Alec was right about the whole ‘winding down’-thing, I stepped into a fight aiming to break it up and got a fist crashing into my face instead. Not exactly the most pleasant way to start off the expedition, but I have had worse over the years.

Heh.

Should have seen the face of Billy boy though. Almost as if he had punched his own father in the face, the entire circle immediately grew quiet as if I was about to slaughter their friend right in front of them. What a joke, but sometimes I forget how they look at me.

I punched Billy right back in the face and then helped him up - can’t just let something like that go, but neither was I going to escalate it any more than I needed to.

 

[Arage Bao]

I think the punch did some good though, it only reaffirmed my position and at the same time told ‘em that I wasn’t just going to kill someone over a flying punch: you had to have some kind of… line, I believe.

A code you follow and make sure your brothers follow too.

Anyway. I sent out a message and the transports should be here by tomorrow morning, reasonably sure we can keep the peace for another day.

I will have to find myself a bag with ice though. Billy punches with the weight of a freight truck behind it.

It wasn't a coincidence they called the lad the bruiser. Hell, word has it he once ran his own crew out of a coffee shop on 'Shadaa itself. Same type of deal like ol' Jimmy's had, they payed for his protection and in return all kinds of criminals spend their cash their... because they knew that nobody messed with Billy.

Think the only difference between Bill and me is ambition. I always had too much of it.

 

[Arage Bao]

My vision is swimming from all the numbers. The Peregrine has enough space for six months of consumables and that doesn’t even take in account the amount of cargo space we managed to free up… I am talking roughly 148,000 tons of space - ain’t exactly what Silk advertised when it produced the things for the Coalition, but it was sure as hell better than most things on the market.

We will have enough space for fuel, equipment, medical supplies and perhaps even some place for loot. Those vaults have been sitting in the void between galaxies for centuries, forgotten by the Galaxy at large and even the InterGalactic Banking Clan would have lost track of 'em.

Think about it- everything was cast down, first and foremost. So no supplies send there equaled everything there isolated and dead. That and space drift? Meant that even if the IGBC had their old records, they would no longer match the current locations.

I am not considering it very likely that we will find treasure, though. There is a big chance they managed to evacuate the biggest shares, before the sickness swept them all away.

Not that it really matters to me, because I wasn't after the treasure. It would just be a fun extra.

 

[Arage Bao]

Because the entire point of this mission is to establish a network, an infrastructure of shadowports. That was the inherent weakness of the current shadowports, in my opinion at least, they were haphazardly scattered across the Galaxy without any apparent logic, without a form of quality control and controlled by just as many crime groups as there were stations.

It meant that there wasn’t any… stability or coherent line. No framework of common rules, common power structures or anything like that.

What it meant was that there was no order. And without a semblance of order we might as well be the Red Ravens or the remnants suckers of the Black Sun. Just a bunch of degenerates playing at the game, without actually doing anything worthwhile with it. Pulling in cash by the metric ton and only wasting it.

But with a network of shadowports, all under one rule? The money and goods would flow, people could disappear, there would be faith in the system.

 

[Arage Bao]

Two Peregrines and a Forerunner.

That’s what we got for this mission. It’s already too much, I fear. Don’t take that as an admission of lack of resources, because that is not the actual issue - I am reasonably sure I could outfit an entire fleet with highly skilled personnel, hundreds of checks and balances, equipment that would put the Grand Republic Army to shame and even then I doubt I would put even a dent in the revenues Wild Space are currently generating for me.

Then again, the GRA isn't exactly a standard to talk home about these days. Some whispers spoke of the entire clone army defecting too, to the Mandalorians if you can believe it.

Money ain't the issue, never been the money. But then I would need to either screen every single crew member or just hope to fly by the seat of my pants, not something I am looking forward to. So no, we need to keep this expedition as small as possible without actually putting too big of a risk on the crews that are going.

The current plan is fairly simple.

 

[Arage Bao]

The Forerunner will be the flagship of the little flotilla. It will be moving first, moving fast and exploring in preparation for the Peregrines coming in: they will be arriving with material and equipment to create temporary outposts in the form of makeshift stations that can hold a few crewmembers each and can link together with each other.

You might wonder why we are going through such a hassle. Why not just head with a single little freighter to the nearest coordinates and hope it’s all good… I wish it was that simple, the facts are pretty straight forward.

The listening post led Anja and me to another ExGal research facility, this one a station out in the void of deep space itself.

ExGal... stands for Extragalactic, as in the Extragalactic Society - a 'company' that was all about trying to peer into the darkness outside the Galaxy to figure out if there was life there. Of course, life found us instead, before the plague settled in. But their sensitive equipment picked up more than just any semblance of life out there.

That's why we hunted down that location.

 

[Arage Bao]

It was a success too, which surprised some of the nay-sayers close to me. They were probably expecting that all the databanks were wiped clean or stolen after all these years.

But that was where their cynicism lost 'em. They didn't factor in that during the entire period of the plague... everyone was isolated from everything. Chaos ran high and I counted on the fact that people had more important stuff to worry about than some databanks - especially after the Yuuzhan Vong had already proven there was life out there.

And I was right.

It was there that Anja found her ‘answers’ and I found snippets of coordinates. Enough to give us a fairly good idea where the Vault Stations are, but not enough to actually pinpoint them: locations and coordinates are all relative here out in space - miniscule shifts and changes across time can mean huge differences when it comes to actual location.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our main destination has floated away a long time ago, which means even more time spent tracking it down again.

 

[Arage Bao]

We might have a problem.

I just received an encrypted message from the InterGalactic Banking Clan. I ain’t sure how they managed to get through. We are using hijacked DarkNet nodes to bounce off our signals in these parts of the Galaxy, it ensures that regular slicers have an impossible time and that the Primeval can’t just read in on our missives, but somehow the IGBC managed to get through.

We will have to start another security sweep to figure out where the weakness came from. Because if they are capable of penetrating defenses that are supposed to be impenetrable? It complicated things severely. We won't be able to rely on our messages to be private anymore.

All that being said... they know.

 

[Arage Bao]

Dear mister Malvern.

I am aware of your efforts outside the Galaxy and I wish to ensure that you know that the InterGalactic Banking Clan is in no way going to hamper your progress.

In fact… this message has a feed of information attached to it that will shrink your searching field, the Clan is no longer interested in the contents of the stations or the stations themselves - in our opinion the definition of ownership has passed after three or four hundreds of years.

I merely hope that you will find this data enlightening and will consider signing up as a client to the Banking Clan. The sheer amount of value and worth your persona represents… well, it would be a boon to us and to you if it was properly managed.

I wish you luck with your expedition and hope to hear soon from you.

Magister Kilvaari

 

[Arage Bao]

This… complicates things. I have already separated the data feed and had it routed to a detached computer terminal, just to be sure that it doesn’t contain some kind of virus.

Yes, the Magister aided the mission somewhat. We only got estimates from the ExGal listening post, this meant that we would first have to localize the exact old locations, before we could start to calculate for drifts. But with the original coordinates now in our possession and the data from ExGal?

It basically means we can start calculating the spacial drift the stations have gone through right away. This shorted our expedition by about a year if not more.

That's what bothers me, though.

If the Magister is on the on and up? Good. But I have learned a long time ago that nothing is as bright as it seems. If he just wants my money in his bank accounts, I can facilitate that to a point. What if he wants more though?

It would complicate things. I have already separated the data feed and had it routed to a detached computer terminal, just to be sure that it doesn’t contain some kind of virus.

I am going to think on this.

 

[Arage Bao]

Sink or swim, that was the name of the game.

When I was younger life was different.

It might sound like a form of nostalgia, but it was true, life was different or at least it seemed that way. Life was more simple… the lines were drawn, you had the good Jedi on one side, the bad Sith on the other and in the middle were the regular folk that were always caught in the middle of an eternal ideological struggle that nobody but the two sects cared about.

In a way this hadn’t changed, it was still Jedi versus Sith: The Sith Empire was replaced by the One Sith, but the Republic was still at a war with them… and the regular people were still being killed, murdered at the behest of the two sects.

 

[Arage Bao]

But something is different now, I can feel it in the air. The mystique, the opportunity, the chance, it was as if I found myself at an axis of change, to escape from that mindless conflict and do something else with my life. This journey was part of that, I know it to be true, it presents me with a chance to create something lasting.

In that light… I have decided to ignore the missive sent by the Banking Clans. I will probably open an account at some point, perhaps even see if their Magisters are truly as good at finance as they themselves claim: perhaps one of them can help me with legitimizing more of my business, but that will come in due time.

If I start setting up all that administrative nonsense, we will be here for the next six months.

And if anything, we have already wasted enough time.

 

[Arage Bao]

Most of the supplies are here, the men have returned and this time in good spirits… we are ready.

Tomorrow we will be embarking on a journey few others have tried before. Exciting? yes, but also frightening. The prospects are quite daunting, but I have to keep my eyes on the price, there have been many scores over the years.

But this one could be it.

The one that will underline everything I have worked for throughout the years. It could mean complete independence and security from those that might be jealous of the Exchange. No nation was big enough to plant a fleet in any of the stations, they were secret enough that there won't be eyes cast at it every minute of the day either.

This could be it.

 

[Arage Bao]

The alarm rang through his cabin. Insisting beeping hellbent on getting him up for what was to be a very, very long day - he wasn’t interested, a flick of his hand and the datapad crashed into the wall, a soft whine followed before it died.

Khal rolled around, turning his back to the broken alarm and the year’s worth of work that was represented by it. But that was the entire thing about it, ain't it? It's the creeping sense, the crawl at the edge of your throat that reminds you of something important. You can't just turn your back on things and think it will be alright.

Might be just a broken alarm, but he opened his eyes regardless.

His vision swam.

That alarm told him that their expedition was getting somewhere, finally.

It wasn't enough. His eyes closed again, trying to return to that empty void where he could let his mind rest. In the distance though... that sound of heels clicking against the durasteel floor?

It meant there was no luck to be had today.