Private Founding of Bacta-Works

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Wearing: Interceptor Gear

Armed With: Ionised Stun Pistol

With: Moya Virtu


Most of the ones who had shown up to the factory were war vets, others had come to Epica to forget their past and lured by the prospect of a major business being started in the yharwod commune. It was a respectable size, and the machinery for producing Bacta was new and sparkly.

A woman in a long green gown with her features obscured by a bronze mask bid them all to take seats.

"Greetings. My name is Michelle. I represent the owner of this factory you see before you..." she said, her voice disguised by a synthesizer. "Please take a seat."

They all sat in folding chairs on the factory floor. One raised his hand.

"Yes?" she asked.

"How come the owner isn't here?"

"The owner prefers to keep their identity private except to the relevant tax authorities. Before the factory opens in two days, I have come to inform you of general ground rules. They are very simple, and should be easy to follow."

Everyone remained silent, listening.

"The first rule is that you shall never attempt to ask or discover who owns this factory. The second is that you will not inquire what goes on in another department unless it is absolutely essential to completing your duties. Third is I am functionally second in command. All complaints and concerns will be handled directly by me or those I appoint to act in my steed. Do all these things, work hard and efficient, and your paycheck is assured, along with full healthcare, and a bonus at life day. Any questions?"

Silence. She studied them. She had been very careful in helping Nathan select who to hire, having studied their Psychological profiles thoroughly, helping him pick only those who cared about the paycheck and making ends meet over those who were curious or nosy. It was by no means perfect...she could still be surprised. But in this case she had hit all the nails. No one tried to press for more info. With luck they could keep this a nice, quiet operation.

"Bacta-Works of Epica pursues a mission of peace. We make that which heals, and are devoted to ensuring our customers receive only the finest product. With the advantages we are set to deploy, we have every potential to become one of the most powerful businesses on this world, and our reach will expand and stretch across multiple factions. All of that will be made possible by the work and research you conduct in these rooms. I look forward to the beginning of a long and profitable relationship with you, as does my employer."

Ten minutes later...

Moya Virtu walked out of the factory, servant droids having prepared a large cake to welcome the employees. She quickly removed the bronze mask and headed up the fire escape. It was the crack of dawn. Plains of Epica looked lovely. But she doubted Nathan was capable of appreciation of the way the sun spread over the grass. He calmly ate a small stuffed crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hutt, right out of the box. He didn't seem like he was enjoying it. Nathan didn't seem to actually enjoy any food he ate, even if she had seen him eating it multiple times. He had a blank, almost catatonic expression. His back was to the sun. He was dressed in his typical pitch black biker leathers.

"I never pictured you as a Pizza Lover..." Moya said, now barely able to converse with him after initial weeks of silence and hostility.

"Y'know..." he trailed..."I never had this quaint luxury during the Plague. Stuff was so bad it was next to impossible to establish a restaurant chain."

He paused a moment, biting into a slice and chewed.

"I might have been able to enjoy this, back then."

"You can't taste it, or something?" Moya asked. Many of her conversations with him disturbed her. He was as fethed up as his daughter. Maybe worse.

"I taste Oil. Salt. Meat. Sauce. Cheese. Dough. But it never blends together the way it would have back then. It's all wet paper to me."

"That... Nathan, that's horrible..." Moya replied softly, pity and concern crossing her voluptuous features.

He took another bite.

"Not really..." Nathan replied, pausing in a thoughtful manner.

"I had it coming..." he decided after a moment. "Any problems with the new employees?"

"No. It was like I said. They care more about food on their table than any schemes we're running..."

"Good. Let's keep it that way." he replied, eating the last slice and cleaning his hand with a napkin.

"Nathan...not being able to enjoy food is a sign of immense depression." Moya pointed out.

He stood up, started to walk away. "I'll be fine..." he replied.

"No!" Moya snapped, raising her voice to him for the first time ever. He turned slowly, examining her mechanically.

"No you won't!" Moya continued in a pained hiss. "Because your daughter wasn't! Her pain grew and grew until it exploded! If you think I'm going to stand by and watch you become another Laertia Io , and do nothing, THINK AGAIN!"

Nathan only stared at her coldly. Moya's expression remained tense, though her voice softened.

"I want to help you, Nathan, I do. But I cannot do that if you're going to wall your pain away like she did." Moya continued, desperately trying to reach him. "I feel the pain of my failure with your child every day. Every single day! Like a nail in my chest! And all I have left to truly remember her by is an old rabbit I helped her raise, getting a little slower, a little weaker, by the day. And you!"

Nathan's expression barely softened.

"When that rabbit dies, the last of the Laertia that I killed people to protect will be gone. And I will be alone. All alone. You say I owe you for every feth up I made with her, and you're right. But I also owe it to you to steer you away from her mistakes. Because I cannot bear the thought of you becoming her."

Moya stepped closer. Nathan was still as a statue.

"I think deep down, you are a good man." Moya added in an even softer voice. "But you have no hope of defeating the Cult OR Laertia if you don't fix yourself mentally. And I am probably the only person in the Galaxy who can even start to understand all the important parts. If you will not take advantage of that...then you are a fool, and I am wasting my time. It would have been better to leave me on Qi-Ko, to care for my one remaining fragment of your daughter as long as I could in selfish seclusion and exile, desperately trying to remember the last time I was truly happy, than to drag me across the Galaxy to watch you start making her mistakes!"

Moya then turned away from him.

"I'll be waiting on the ship..." she said in a broken voice.

"Moya." Nathan called out quietly.

Moya turned around.

"I do appreciate the help you've given me."

Moya sighed. "I believe you."

Moya walked down the fire escape stairs.

Later that day...

Once more aboard the derelict luxury station, Nathan ate gizka soup in silence.

"Nathan..." Moya said, sitting across from him, "You told me you can't enjoy food. Yet you said you deserved not to, so that was why you didn't mind. What are you punishing yourself for?"

"Take your pick..." he replied, eating the meal that tasted like wet paper in his mouth.

"Be specific."

Nathan got very quiet.

"I betrayed someone to the Cult out of revenge. That someone was captured by the Cult, converted to one of their witches...and now holds my daughter's hand in marriage..."

Moya sat back, stunned at how effin' horrifying this revelation was.

"So you see, Virtu, this isn't just simple revenge. This is me trying to fix a mistake."

Nathan slowly ate more of his soup.

"I was revived in a world where all my worst enemies got what they wanted. A world where my wife and I were totally forgotten, in addition to being dismembered. The worst part? All I would have had to do to avoid at least some of it was to be what my wife thought I was...a good Jedi...and forgive...and when the moment of truth came I couldn't do that."

The proximity alert sounded in the main office, one of the only truly inhabitable rooms on the station. It seemed Eocin Chiyat was minutes from arrival.

Nathan rose.

Business calls." he added, heading out to the refurbished main hangar to receive his shady, untrustworthy guest...

 

[Eocin Chiyat]

Medicine. As far as business went, it was up there with arms dealing when it came to consistent profits.

So long as you weren't one of those bleeding-heart ninnies with too much empathy to properly exploit the needy, that is. Nothing killed profit margins quite like excessive charity. If you had to give money away, it should be tax deductible.

Not that Connor made a habit of paying his fair share if he could avoid it.

"My friend! What a lovely station you have - though you are right that it needs some work." Connor stepped onto the hangar floor with a spring in his steps and a gleam in his eyes. Behind him came an eclectic collection of individuals; humans, humanoids, aliens, and droids. The latter was split between regular ones (surely that didn't count as slavery) and free droids.

"Fortunately, I have brought just the people you need. Barriv-" He pointed towards a scruffy human with greying hair, plenty of scars, and a cybernetic arm. "- will ensure that whatever needs fixing gets fixed and you would be hard-pressed to find a better slicer than Fennec." The Lamproid, of all things, was young for her (?) species. If you could tell.

She did, however, have some useful-looking implants; a necessity given her lack of opposable thumbs.

"The rest will answer to those two if that works for you?" Connor didn't give a rat's ass, so long as he was paid.

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

"Welcome, Mister Strobrac..." Nathan said as Eocin Chiyat stepped off his vessel. Nathan had the same, grim expression as when Connor first met him.

"That works for me, yes..." Nathan replied to his question, gesturing to Moya Virtu , clad in her typical dark dress.

"My assistant, Michelle..." he explained. "Follow me, please."

He led Connor through a run down, decrepit interior.

"A lot of the passages are collapsed. What still works is protected by Military Grade Security. Generators are gonna require a tune up eventually but we are months off from that."

They finally reached the partly restored main office, where a large salvaged desk had been set up.

"Because I am aware of the type of business you're into let me be the first to assure you that Bacta-Works will not be a charity. We will charge full price, every time, for our product. It will be expensive. However, we will never sell bad or second hand medicine. We may not be a charity, but we won't put Snake Oil in our products either. People will get what they pay for, and it will work exactly as advertised. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions." Nathan told him, sitting down across from him.

"We'll charge double if we have to smuggle it. But for the most part, this operation will be kept as legitimate as possible. Any questions?"

 

[Eocin Chiyat]

Connor nodded along as he trailed Nathan. When his stance was made abundantly clear, it earned a mischievous smile from the 'entrepreneur'. "I would expect nothing less, my friend. Snake oil, as you put it, is hardly suited for long-term profit. Unless you can convince people it works, of course." An idiot was born every second, after all.

He wasn't even going to pretend he hadn't been involved in that sort of thing.

"You plan to opt for a set price, then? You can probably extract a great deal more from places under embargo. Assuming your people can get in, of course." It seemed a waste to just double the price if the market could take more. Likewise, it may well be profitable to sell for less, in some cases. Places with underfunded customs but high import fees, for example.

Connor might be a soulless vulture, but... but nothing, actually. 'nuff said.

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

"In most cases, such as territory our company is legally allowed to operate in, I was considering a set price. However, for situations like the one you just mentioned, yes, I can be flexible..." Nathan replied to Eocin Chiyat .

Nathan pulled out a healing Stim containing a red fluid.

"Of course, I do have multiple products I can sell at multiple prices. I'm perfectly capable of creating normal Bacta but this is a special recipe. It's a synthetic Bacta that heals at only eighty percent the speed of real Bacta, but even those who are allergic to real Bacta can use this stuff. I also have a formula that's much stronger than this one."

Moya Virtu raised an eyebrow as she sat nearby, arms folded. Where had he gotten such a formula?

"The operation is small for the moment. But very manageable." Moya added, having been identified as 'Michelle' to Connor earlier. She was a voluptuous figure in a dark gown. "The workers are to be kept in the dark about who is in charge. They're mainly refugees and veterans who immigrated to Epica and are just looking for an easy paycheck."

"We'll take it easy at first, though. Have to work out any remaining flaws in our approach in the weeks ahead." Nathan assured Connor.

 

[Eocin Chiyat]

Connor nodded along as Nathan elaborated, an easy smile on his lips.

"How delightful - and with a synthetic source, profits would spike if the bacta supply is ever compromised." Which was entirely possible if, say, the Galactic Alliance and the Sith found themselves at each other's throats. Again.

He could only hope.

When Nathan mentioned the workers, Connor's smile broadened. "They certainly sound like they need the work." They were exploitable, in other words, not to mention non-native. The latter would be useful if any of them died at work. So much easier to dispose of people without local connections. Not that Connor supported intentionally killing employees.

Just because he didn't 'coddle' them didn't mean he wanted fatalities.

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

"I'm glad to see I've gotten your attention." Nathan spoke. "In that case, all that really remains is to give you a tour of the Factory on Epica."

Nathan got up and gestured for Eocin Chiyat to follow him to a Lambda Class Shuttle he had acquired to the surface of the planet...


Later on...


Nathan and Moya led Connor through the modestly sized facility, and into the set of chambers were multiple versions of the company's Bacta Synthesizer could be observed. Nathan had changed into a black suit and tie, wearing a gold mask to obscure his features, and a built in voice modulator to disguise his voice. It was very clear he was going out of his way to avoid be identified as in any way associated with the company. This paranoia had been instilled into him by his father.

"So Connor..." Nathan trailed. "What's the Verdict? Can we do business?"

 

[Eocin Chiyat]

Like his compatriot, Connor had opted to disguise his identity - there was no reality in which he willingly allowed himself to be the sole identified owner of an operation. That sort of thing led to culpability.

In stark contrast to the golden mask, he had opted for a balaclava and a pair of goggles.

"Indeed we can. I look forward to a mutually profitable venture." If the man tried to trick him out of his share, he could always attempt to figure out who he was so paranoid about. Perhaps they would pay well.

For now, he let thoughts of potential betrayal leave his mind.

Instead, he moved for a handshake. Swift, traditional, and devoid of a paper trail.