Private Mystery in the Clouds

[Grant Navarro]

​

CLOUD CITY
AFTER THE EVENTS OF HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
Nadi Arris Windrun

He had been observing the same building for about three hours now. It all looked normal enough, except for every little sign that screamed wrong to him. The building was registered to a company that couldn't have more than about a dozen people. So why then had about 30 walked in and out of the premises in the past three hours? Some had disappeared inside and never returned. Others came and went. Then a few exited the building that Grant had never seen walk in, in the first place.

Then the speeders: three had arrived in the last thirty minutes. Empty when they arrived, empty when they left.

And last but not least, a sleepy firm like this shouldn't have more than a rent-a-cop stationed out front. So ask Grant why they had three veterans set up on key junctions down and across the street? They were fancy about it too. Old clothes, one had even grown out his beard and hair to look like a bum, another was pretending like he was reading the newspaper on a nearby bench.

Except with the time spent on that newspaper, he could have invented a whole new edition on the fly.

No, something was definitely wrong.

Mercy 's intel had been sparse. Nothing more than a name of a lawyer who kept showing up on random jurisdiction papers. That lawyer was employed by a mid-sized brokerage firm that had two locations on Cloud City. A small office, that hadn't seen any activity in six months by the looks of the paper pile-up and this warehouse. Which had way too much activity.

His fingers itched to get inside, but the boss woman had been clear about it.

Observe, scout, wait for back-up.

Back-up didn't take long either. A car stopped a street over, thank Coruscant it didn't stop right next to the warehouse, so he wasn't dealing with amateurs. He waited for them to stroll on over before Grant nodded.

"Nadi, Windrun, I presume." Descriptions matched. Nadi looked relatively normal, if a little pale, but Windrun was a freak if Grant had ever witnessed one. Not a judgement call, Grant didn't mind freaks. But it made it rather obvious what he was dealing with. He gestured with his wrist-comm and a ping appeared on both their devices. The comings and goings, the observations he had made so far. "One hell of a mess we got here."

 

[Nadi]

"Navarro."

Not a question so much as a statement.

She'd had some time to recover in the thankfully quiet ride over here, and her dampener was tuned to thirty percent now; low enough that her voice could carry to those in her immediate vicinity. She raised her datapad and began reviewing his intel.

<It's pretty karking shady all right, but nothing that seems to indicate.... Ah. The lawyer.>

On paper, he should have been an invisible nobody, and while Nadi had no interest in trying to decipher legal briefs and papers, even she could tell that his name was surfacing with alarming frequency in the roadblocks that were being thrown up in the negotiations.

"Any sign of him on-site?"

It would certainly make things easier if he was here. Much less tracking and running and hunting.

<It would also make things less fun.>

She closed here eyes and worked to reign herself in, but it was slower going than usual. She'd felt the anticipation building the entire ride over here, and it was getting more and more difficult to hold it back.

What's that saying about dams and floods?

Grant Navarro | Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Grant Navarro | Nadi
​

It didn't take long for Arris to find and steal them an airspeeder. It was inconspicuous, too, registered to a local courier service. They'd surely miss it, but it also meant they wouldn't stand out when they arrived.

"Nice to meet ya in the flesh, Grant," Arris loved to drop a first name among strangers. "Glad to see you're more than just a dossier on my desk."

Being surrounded by ex-Alliance officers, even if half of them were incarcerated fraudsters and war criminals by the time the Alliance fell, gave Windrun an inside track. Still, much of his existence had been stricken from the records as the fallen government planned to cover its clandestine ass. Even the ISB had trouble figuring it all out.

Arris received her ping internally, thanks to the co-processor lodged inside her meatcomputer. She processed the data as her eyes fell upon the building.

Nadi had already asked the good question, so Arris would lay claim to the bad one.

"Why don't we just march right through the front door?"

She found that blunt and incorrect questions like that inspired a certain kneejerk analysis in paranoid survivors like she expected a former Alliance Special Forces operative to be. Arris fully anticipated him to triple-assess what he already knew of the risks involved, which would give her a clearer picture of the threat vector and - if they were lucky - a plausible point of entry.

Still, given the cyborg's reputation and dry delivery, she wouldn't be shocked if he took her at face value. Wouldn't be surprised if Nadi did, either, perhaps knowing even less about Arris Windrun.

Arris reached into her pocket, drawing another one of her mildly psychedelic cigarettes. Lit, pulled, exhaled. She held it out between the two, a lazy offer without a word.