Padawan Menace
Haruun Kal was in the thirteenth hour of a double shift.
Things had been been worse before CorpSec had arrived. Much more lax. A lot fewer controls on the ports, but they hadn't operated under this many rules. Background checks. Personnel security. HR might as well have called itself Internal Affairs. And, it wasn't like they were cops. Haruun was a customs and immigration officer, for crying out loud. He didn't carry a blaster. He had a comlink and a scanner. That was it.
But their staffing had been karked from here to Denon ever since the Corporate Authorities had picked up the lease on this orbital shithole, and now here he was, back on a double while the taxes were nickel and diming his paycheck down to nothing, and they'd lost their dental to boot.
"4827, you have an inbound transport to docking bay nineteen."
Tapping the side of his head, the man triggered the ear comlink before he answered, "4827, on it."
Stepping onto a repulsor platform, sipping on a cup of cold caf as the platform lazily moved him along the corridor toward the next bay in his assigned sector. As he moved, he could see a blue emblazoned HWK-1000 light freighter navigating into the berth. Glancing down at the datapad in his hand, the man watched as the system synced with the data feed from traffic control. The arrival was a ship called the Pearl of Yavin. Concord registry. Some kind of courier outfit registered to Hosnian Prime.
Kal arrived at the base of the loading ramp right as the ship was starting to power down. Stepping off the repulsor platform, the man unclipped a stylus from the front of his uniform and pulled up the arrival checklist as he waited for the occupants to disembark.
A gangly kid with a mop of purple hair stuck his head out of the ship. "Sup, brah," the teen offered, as the boy seemed to fumble with a variety of documents in his arms. A white and orange R3 unit was rolling alongside the kid.
As Kal sized him up, the Wroonian or Pantoran (or whatever variety of blue alien this was) was dressed in some kind of uniform that was indigo and white, with a crest on the chest that was emblazoned with the letters PCS. "Purpose of visit?"
"Plutonia Courier Services, brah," the teen answered, awkwardly shuffting datapads and identicards.
The man's eye twitched. "Business?" he uttered, re-phrasing the question.
"Totes," the teen supplied glibly. "I'm, like, delivering packages, my dude."
My dude. Kal kept his expression neutral, but a vein was starting to stand out on the side of his head. Drawing in a deep breath, the man merely moved on down his list. "Cargo manifest and commercial license?"
The boy nearly dropped out of the datapads, fumbling and managing to catch it. Going through the variety of electronic paperwork, the teen finally held out out as he said, "I might 'a gotten some pizza sauce on it."
Kal caught himself grinding his teeth. Reluctantly, he accepted the datapad, and then began sorting through the inventory that was there.
As he did, the teen's amber eyes moved around the interior of the docking bay. As he did, he made a slight gesture with one hand down toward the astromech. There was a muted chirp in reply.
"License and registration?"
The boy started to reach into his arm full of documents, then blended the motion into a wave of his hand. "You don't need to see my license," the youth uttered. His voice was different as he spoke. Neutral and flat in tone, even as it belied the slight accent that Pantorans were known for.
"I don't need to see your license."
A second wave of his hand, except this time he did reach into his stack of documents. "You were just about to approve the entry," the boy supplied, passing an identicard over toward the customs agent.
"I was just about to approve the entry," the man repeated, accepting the identicard and then using his stylus to input the visa.
"You do your job well," the boy noted with a third wave.
"I do my job well." the man echoed, as he finished making his entry.
A final wave, and the youth said only, "Move along."
"Move along," Kal uttered gruffly, passing the cargo manifest and identicard back to the boy. With that, the man got back on his platform and lazily rolled away from the ship.
"Totes, brah," the boy uttered, shifting back into character as he called after the retreating customs official. Once the man was out of earshot, the boy gave a low whistle. At the signal, a pair of slithering forms appeared at the top of the loading ramp. One was darker than the Black Nebula. The other was a shimmering assortment of white, gold, and blue.
Glancing down at the astromech, the teen said, "ArThree, find a port and then see if you can locate that Kanjiklub ship."
With the Galactic Alliance security cracking down on the Coruscant Undercity, Boo had shifted his efforts at the spice flowing up and down the Hylian Way. He'd been tacking some shipments that Kanjiklub was moving, but he hadn't been able to trace it back to whoever Kanjiklub was buying their supply from.
Maybe this would be another wasted trip. Or maybe they'd finally start to peel back the curtain.
Walking up the loading ramp, the boy picked up an innocuous-looking shipping container. Shifting it under one arm, he then bent down to scratch the head of the amphistaff. "Azi, you're on guard duty," Boo explained, starting to walk back off the ship before he turned and gently booped the snugglesnek on the nose.
"Coi, just be adorable."
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