First Reply No time to

[Ellie Mors]

N A R · S H A D D A A

c. 900 ABY​

RIMMER'S REST · SMUGGLER'S BAR​

LATE EVENING​

party​

Neon lights illuminated, if only just, the walls and cast a faint glow towards the center of the cantina. A number of suspicious individuals made their way to and from the bar, Amara herself with in the midst of it all with a brightly colored cocktail in hand. The music reverberated through the building, its bass adding to the beat in her chest, and she nodded her head slightly along to the tune while she sauntered towards an empty booth in a secluded corner of the room. Out of the corner of her eye she could make out the recognizable face of a rather notorious Duros bounty hunter, the sort of company she tended to avoid outside of her "work hours", while straight ahead of her she could make out various gangsters, smugglers, and the like chatting, drinking, and arguing at various tables and booths around the bar.

It had been the usual for her - last minute holocall that brought her all the way out to Nar Shaddaa to make sure credits left the pockets of some hutt and ended up in the accounts of the Black Sun. She was starting to feel like a glorified accountant, just the sort that only worked with dirty money. "I need a vacation." She grumbled to herself, taking a sip of her drink while she shifted slightly in her newfound seat. Part of the reason she wasn't able to work quite as remotely as she'd like was the fact that she was responsible for meeting with clients to the syndicate and negotiate terms of payment and services on the organization's behalf for the jobs she took - and sometimes she was the one who had to smuggle goods in the first place. It didn't help that she was supposed to be waiting on information on yet another potential client.

She lifted the glass up from the tabletop and swirled the drink with a waving motion of her hand and an exceptionally uninspired look on her face.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

Nar Shaddaa was the worst place to be for a man with a substantial bounty on his head.

As Gatz weaved his way through the dense crowd of the neon lit cantina, he mulled that thought over. Being back on the Smuggler's Moon was downright suicide. Too many bounty hunters called this ecumenopolis home, and there were far too many thugs, spice dealers, and general malcontents loyal to Kragan Garr here. Hutt Space held no refuge for the young smuggler, not anymore.

But Gatz was desperate. He'd avoided Kragan's hunters for months now, and with each one, they got closer and closer to finally getting him. That was his fault: he'd killed the man's son, and had recently made a career out of dismantling the Quarren's budding slaver empire. He'd only done what he thought was right, but he hadn't considered the consequences of his actions.

Now the last of his family was dead, and he was soon to follow.

Gatz had no more allies in the criminal underworld—not that anyone ever did. But he had been owed one last favor, and he'd burned it to get a name: Amara Satev. A woman particularly good at moving money, or so he was told. With no way to go after Kragan directly—at least not yet—Gatz had to go after the next best thing: the man's money. It was a dangerous thing to do, messing with a crime lord's income, but any and all loyalty owed to Kragan was bought.

If he could find someone to break the bank, find a way to ensure that Kragan couldn't afford to pay out for his bounty, Gatz would finally be safe.

And so, with his head ducked down and swathed in his usual ostentatious red jacket, Gatz slid into the booth, right across from the woman he needed to speak with.

"I need a vacation."

"Maybe I can help you afford one," Gatz leaned back into the booth, smile on his face as if he was supposed to be there, "but I'd need a little help first. Gatz Derrevar. Captain of The Red Night. I heard you're the woman to talk to when someone needs money moved."

 

[Ellie Mors]

​

She hardly began the motion of pulling the glass back towards her lips when she heard the quip thrown her way. She shut her eyes tight and held in the urge to groan, keeping the cocktail at a little less than arm's reach, before shifting her focus towards the man that had so unceremoniously occupied the same booth as her. "You have, have you?" She asked, eyes opening to a narrowed, pointed, stare. "Because I haven't heard of you." Amara added with a wry smile. Setting the drink down, which might as well have been forgotten at this point, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her right leg over her left, smoothing the length of her skirt down with her left hand.

Gesturing towards the man expectantly with a wave of her right hand, eyebrows arching questioningly, Amara tilted her head to the side ever-so-slightly. "Usually men don't offer to cover my expenses and then ask me for help getting those credits in the same breath." She retorted, quite amused by her own framing of things. Her job, as it related to credits, was to launder money so that the dirty money that mobsters and the like always seemed to find themselves weighed down with became clean - her clients generally knew better than to act on whatever lascivious thoughts that might wander through their minds whenever she met with them, she was essentially the weakest link in the most sensitive part of their entire operation.

"In either case, whatever it is that you've heard is probably correct. I make credits linked to one person disappear and reappear somewhere else linked to someone else entirely, with new trails to boot so bootlickers are none the wiser." She tilted her head to the other side, the corner of her lip twitching just a little, once, and gave the man a once-over. "But just what, Gatz Derrevar , does a small-time captain need the services of the Black Sun for? Bank heist or something?" Amara asked warily. It wouldn't be the first time some unhappy former mark of the syndicate hired some upstart pilot to try to lure someone in her position out into the street, only for both of them to disappear and never be heard from again - and she preferred living.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

Annoying beautiful women with his woefully underappreciated humor? Tale as old as time. Gatz may not have been a scoundrel these days, but he still had no issue emulating that old smuggler's swagger: the kind that everyone knew was a bluff, but nobody cared enough to actually say anything. In a way, donning his old role was sort of fun. Gatz could almost forget that the last few months had ever happened, and pretend he was still a spice hauler who cared only about what he was getting paid.

That was, of course, a fantasy. He was still in mortal danger. And being a smuggler didn't appeal to him anymore. He'd done too much harm in those days.

"If you haven't heard of me, then that's proof enough of my skill. A notorious smuggler is a terrible smuggler. They just attract attention, instead of slipping under the radar like we're supposed to do."

All her pointed jokes aside, it seemed like Amara was at least willing to entertain what he wanted to ask of her. Now all he had to do was... well, frame robbing a notorious crime lord as a lucrative venture, instead of making it sound like the suicidal endeavor that it actually was. Gatz had always been good at talking up ideas, and smoothing out jagged edges with pretty words, but this one might be beyond even him.

Especially these days. He was out of practice.

"A bank heist is close," Gatz admitted with a smile, "does the name 'Kragan Garr' ring a bell? Drug lord, slaver, general piece of shit? I heard he's been moving into Black Sun territory, and I know you guys really don't like that sort of thing. And I've got my own quarrel with him. I thought you might want to rid yourself of him, rob him blind, and keep half the money for yourself."

Gatz held up a data disk, something a good friend of his—a Jedi Master, actually—had obtained on Nar Shaddaa months ago now.

"He's been in hiding for awhile—he's a coward like that—but I know where he rests his tentacles these days. I even have a key to the backdoor."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Taking down rival gang lords and the like wasn't a prospect that was at all daunting to the Black Sun, at least not to the organization as a whole, but it was an entirely different issue depending on which of the individuals within the sprawling crime syndicate one might ask. People like Kragan Garr were a dime a dozen when placed against the bigger named players like the Hutt Clan leaders or the Vitos within the Black Sun, but to anyone even remotely lower on the totem pole he was a menace regardless of their own backing. "A smuggler going after a crime lord?" She asked, suddenly quite a bit less confrontational - the way Gatz Derrevar spoke of the man was exceedingly personal, there was a story there that was quite a bit more genuine than her own paranoia of hitmen on Nar Shaddaa.

"In any case, I suppose it's better that I've never heard of you. It'll make it easier to keep someone like that off my tail if there's no reason to believe we might've worked together in case anything heads south."

She flashed a smile at that, quite a bit less sardonic than the one she'd offered him with her earlier jab at his notoriety. "Onto business.. this is a little bigger than breaking into a man's house and taking a credit chip from his armoire, you're looking at getting into some serious network security messes as well as whatever we'd run into in-person." She said. Stealing things, at least literally getting her own hands dirty, wasn't something Amara typically involved herself with. The Anzat was more than happy to live a comparatively cushy job of moving credits through a series of accounts in increasingly smaller amounts to shake off the trail anyone else might've been following, or carrying contraband on her person to smuggle goods in and out of secure worlds for a small fee - if she was going to do this in an official capacity, as a job that'd be credited to her betters in the Black Sun, then taking half of the mark's money wouldn't be a reality for her.

"How much of this man's worth are you looking to take as your own?" She asked.

Part of whatever she'd be taking from Kragan, were they to succeed in such a hypothetical, would need to go to the Black Sun regardless - trying to persuade her with half of the man's empire of dirt wasn't really as big of an offer as Gatz might've thought if he was hoping to leverage the weight of a crime syndicate on a man like Kragan Garr. Not that it wouldn't be enough, of course, but her job was working with credits - budgeting what she might be owed was currently the only thing on her mind.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

To be entirely honest, Gatz hadn't expected to actually be heard out.

Compared to the Black Sun, Kragan was a bit player, that much was true. But he was still a crime lord whose reach had extended to the whole of the Outer Rim, and some Galactic Alliance territories. And the two of them were still just that—two individuals against a man with that kind of influence. For them, personally, this was a reckless endeavor that was all too likely to end up with their deaths.

But, what criminal didn't take risks?

"I don't like slavers," Gatz said simply, "especially when they kill my uncle, and hire mercs who gun down a dozen of my kinsmen in a market square just to get a clear shot at me."

But the personal aspect of the job didn't really matter. Well, it did to him of course, but Amara had no quarrel with Kragan. Not unless the Black Sun said she did. What really mattered to her was how they were going to split the money. It was hardly the first time Gatz had been part of a conversation like this, but it was the first time he was the one proposing the job.

"Half goes to you. You can give a share to the Black Sun, or you can keep it under wraps and we can say this job is under the table. I don't care which: I was looking for you specifically, not your organization. They can know as much or as little as you want them to." Gatz's eyes scanned the crowd for a moment, just to make sure no one was sneaking up on them, "twenty percent is mine. The other thirty is going to shelters and organizations that I've worked with—that have helped to care for the slaves I've freed from him."

A charitable smuggler wasn't really a smuggler at all. For all his intent to play the part of a scoundrel—he was dealing with the criminal element after all—he'd all but tossed that façade away with the last part of his statement.

 

[Ellie Mors]

And there it was; the story, that is.

Losing the bleeding heart that so many people with terrible lives had was certainly a part of her introduction to the criminal underworld, but it'd been necessary for her to survive in the normal world just as well. Sob stories in her line of work could influence someone weak of heart to do something for less than they could otherwise earn, or it convinced rather shrewd people into taking the dumbest of jobs. She had her fair share of manipulative romances that started with her trying to provide them her sympathy. For now, at least, she'd put aside what she'd just heard of Kragan's games and the involvement of other people - she'd have to be like her sister, ironically enough, if it meant doing the right thing.

"Done." She said simply.

Her gaze moved down towards the cocktail glass, what few pieces of floating ice that had been floating in there were beginning to melt, and retrieved it in a slow, thoughtful, and methodical motion in order to bring it to her lips. "But if you're willing to gamble this on me on my lonesome.. well.." Her voice trailed off, taking in the sweet drink and wincing at its sharp and bitter aftertaste. "You'll have to forget I was ever involved, ten percent back to you if credits will buy that silence." She said, her expression either reflecting on the bitterness of the drink she'd taken or perhaps the discomfort at making an offer to part with less money than she'd originally been owed.

"I don't care what you do with your own take, as long as what ends up in my hands is enough to pay for whatever services I'll be providing you - half is more than enough if you're asking for me directly."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

"Done."

That was, admittedly, a surprise. Gatz had fully expected this to be a hard sell, one that he wasn't sure he could pull off. He'd only leveraged the Black Sun's name to pique her interest: who he really needed was Amara herself. He was asking her to throw herself in the crosshairs of a dangerous man, all without the reputation of the Black Sun to protect her.

And then she even offered back ten percent—even if she didn't look pleased at the idea—all for keeping his mouth shut.

Gatz had been scum. Probably still was, really. But he had grown so used to dealing with Kragan's ilk, he had forgotten that, yes, there were others in this seedy life of theirs that still cared about doing the right thing. Still cared about others. He'd been so blinded by his feud, that Gatz had become arrogant enough to start believing that he was the only scoundrel still capable of compassion.

He'd never been so relieved to be wrong about something.

"Deal," Gatz agreed, easily, "you were never involved. Forty to you, twenty to me, and another forty to the organizations I mentioned."

He didn't need the extra ten percent. The twenty he was taking for himself was more than enough to make up for the monetary losses Kragan had caused him, and to set himself up comfortably for the rest of his days, provided he didn't spend it frivolously. That other forty percent... it was far more important to him that it go to the people who'd been affected by Kragan, like he had.

Honestly, he should probably give more of his cut to them. But he could think about that if they survived.

"What do you need to get the job done?"

 

[Ellie Mors]

It didn't surprise her, not in the least, to watch the echoes of surprise touch on the features of his face. She was a money launderer, a rather forgettable smuggler, and someone who had something of a weakness for people who offered to lend her a hand - everything about the job he'd asked for her help with went against the sort of risk a person in her position would be willing to take, at least not without the right incentive. Pay was good, great even, but the metaphorical wide net he'd cast hinged on one very big caveat, and credits tended not to go quite so far as people thought they went. He'd expected something else, hesitation at the very least, but she'd given him a single-worded blunt response.

She smiled as he accepted her terms.

"To get the job done? A fair bit of luck.. and the reason I'm buying your silence." Amara answered as she started to shift in her seat again, seeming a little uncomfortable going too far into detail. It'd be difficult to explain too much, harder still, perhaps, to make sure there weren't any eavesdropping rats listening in on something she'd been keeping to herself for the better part of a decade now. Her gaze moved down towards the glass, still gripped by her hand, and preoccupied her focus with it, sliding it this way and that, while she considered how to elaborate without being too truthful.. or the opposite. "Let's just say I share more than a passing resemblance to someone who might've been in the news a decade or so back..." She said, pausing to look back up.

"Anyways, I'm assuming you'll be our way there? On your, uh, what was it.. Red Night?"

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

Amara was cryptic about her reasons for wanting to remain anonymous. To be honest, Gatz hadn't questioned why. If he were being asked to take on a crime lord, he'd probably want to be anonymous too. He'd presumed it was that simple: that she didn't want Kragan catching wind of who she was. Frankly, it was a very straightforward request.

But... at the mention of the news, things changed, and Gatz realized that he'd walked into a situation beyond his understanding. Amara was, for whatever reason, apparently recognizable. At least, to someone or some group. Or, that's what he gathered from the way she spoke on the topic. But that was her business, not his.

If she wanted him to act like they'd never met, then he was happy to give her that.

"We'll take my ship," Gatz confirmed with a nod, "I may not be a smuggler anymore, but I haven't lost the skills. Not yet. Kragan won't even know we've touched down on Lok."

A bold claim for someone constantly being tracked. Kragan's hunters almost always knew where he was. Yet, the ambushes had become less frequent. Maybe all the hunters he'd killed were finally becoming a deterrent for all those muscle-bound idiots looking to make quick credits. Either way, Gatz had long since learned that he had roughly four hours from entering a system before anyone caught on to his location.

As long as they left soon, Kragan and his goons would never know he was even back on Nar Shaddaa. Or, at least, it'd be too late by the time they did.

"Sooner we leave the better. We probably shouldn't leave together though, might make us look a little suspicious," Gatz eyed their surroundings once again, "or we do leave together, like a couple of drunks about to make a mistake they'll both regret in the morning."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Paranoia, in spite of the excuses people were generally willing to give as rationale behind strange quirks and decisions, were always at the root of everything. A striking resemblance to a dead Sith lord had always been the reason she'd clung so tightly to a job as unglamorous as the one she'd had, rather than anything more flashy like the tasks members of the Black Sun that operated in the field were willing to take - she'd been recognized more infrequently as time went on, as the memories of Exegol and Tython faded into the recesses of a darker time that people were more than willing to forget, but her blood relation to a sinister group that still lingered after her likeness's apparent death kept her in line and usually behind a desk.

"Lok, huh?" She muttered, trying to pay attention while she internally battled back the anxiety that she might've said something that she hadn't needed to. It didn't matter, though, given that whatever consequences would or wouldn't come of it were bound to happen, or not, regardless so there wasn't any point in dwelling on the matter. The lingering whispers from the night before, of a future that she'd been avoiding for quite some time, came back to her as Gatz Derrevar turned his musings on their means of exiting the bar. That wasn't something that had really occurred to her, nor had it mattered really, her name might've started making the rounds a little more than she would have liked - particularly if someone she had never met before knew her - but her face was certainly not one that people associated that name with, at least not the sorts of people she would normally be concerned about.

"Believe me, darling," Amara said, deciding to take the initiative for him as he laid out his examples for her, while she moved out of her seat, right hand letting go of the glass so that her fingers could drag lightly against the tabletop, and moved around the table towards the other end of the corner booth. "There's nothing you'll regret more than leaving here without me." She said, a little louder than before so that anyone who might have been eavesdropping could at least overhear the 'wrong' thing, as she lifted that same hand up slick with condensation from the cup she'd been holding and motioned to ruffle the front of his hair. "I'm nobody's mistake."

A momentary pause, a playful smirk that covered up searching eyes.

"Don't be mine."

She started walking off at that, expecting him to follow.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

He'd thought his "one-night stand" idea was a decent one, but Gatz hadn't expected Amara to play the role as well as she did. There was a sultriness to everything she did—even how she slid out of the booth. She passed by him with a smirk that falsely promised things that he certainly shouldn't think about now. Then she ran her hand through his hair, and his mouth gaped like fish.

And then she was gone.

Gatz blinked, unable to comprehend how quickly she'd changed gears. That, and he was also unable to comprehend what in the world had just happened. All his career, he'd been the one doing the wooing. And somehow, Amara had just turned the tables on him, and she was faking the whole thing. Somehow, a fabricated woo had still managed to shut his brain down. Had it really been that long since he'd had a woman's attention, real or otherwise?

He knew the answer to that. So he sighed. Then Gatz stood from the booth, and followed after Amara like a lovesick teenager, which fit the little play they were putting on for their audience of thieves.

It was only once they'd exited the cantina that he spoke, "well, aren't you good at playing the part of the seductress. You had even me fooled for a second."

He turned on his heel to lead Amara in the direction of his landing pad. Gatz had parked as close as he could, knowing that he might have to make a more... exciting exit from Nar Shaddaa. It wasn't a long jaunt, but it was long enough that he found himself trying to fill the silence as they walked the metal streets of the Smuggler's Moon.

"Is there anything we need to stop for, before we get going?"

 

[Ellie Mors]

While Gatz Derrevar seemed to lag behind, in her mind for likely being caught off guard by how naturally she slipped into that decidedly unprofessional persona, Amara walked ahead at a slightly faster pace until she was outside. The fluttering sensation in her gut and the icy tickle that ran up her spine was certainly not from the small amount of alcohol she'd drank. Turning towards the entrance with her eyes fixated on where she figured his head would be when he managed to get outside, flinching somewhat as his silhouette appeared, she knew the feeling came from having to have played that part yet again. It didn't surprise her, not even a little, that he brought it up the moment he was outside, too.

"I know." She said, bluntly.

It was better that way, to acknowledge the affect and the underlying implication that an unspoken question suggested in that it'd been nothing more than an act. She wasn't entirely sure why but, at least for the men in her life, that seemed like a much easier way for them to understand that there wasn't some real desire mixed in with the faux. Explaining that it'd all been a facade seemed to suggest to some of the people she'd met that she was protesting too much or using the truth to lie and at least a dozen other delusions they'd come up with to convince themselves they had a chance. "Anyone that would've been tailing you will have fallen for it just as much." She added.

Her pace slowed so he could take the lead, given that they were going to be boarding his ship, and she eyed the surrounding area while they walked. He didn't seem especially vigilant, not more than someone who was more or less assuming someone working for or with this Kragan Garr fellow was likely keeping tabs on him, though she supposed he didn't necessarily need to be as much compared to her. "Not unless you have some sort of indestructible armor hidden on another planet that we could use." Amara quipped, suggesting she had everything she needed on her person - which seemed to just be the dress she was wearing and the purse hanging from her left shoulder.

"We are just taking his credits, right? If you're going to kill the man, or something else, then I need to know beforehand."

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

After he made his comment on it, Gatz didn't think much about Amara's flirtatious display. She was playing a role, and she just happened to have played it well. That was all. Even if he'd been lonely enough to convince himself it was real—and he wasn't that desperate yet—he had more important matters to deal with. Booty calls were nice. Living was a hell of a lot nicer.

And that was to say nothing of whether or not he deserved affection. He didn't. Not after the things he'd done.

So he moved on, leading Amara to the landing platform The Red Night was parked on. Gatz glanced around every now and then, just to make sure they weren't being eyed by anyone suspicious, but otherwise didn't bother much with being paranoid about being followed. He didn't need to be, not any longer. He'd recently reattuned himself to the Force, and picked up his discarded Jedi training. He still had a long way to go before he was really an adept, but his precognition was light-years ahead of what it had been before.

If there was danger, he'd know before it was upon them.

"You don't even want a change of clothes? I mean, I know Lok isn't that far from here, but I figured you'd at least want pajamas or something."

But then Amara asked him a very serious question. It was one Gatz had pondered, and pondered hard, ever since he'd buried his uncle. Was he going to kill Kragan Garr? He wanted to, more than he'd ever wanted anything. He dreamt of taking the Quarren's life. His every instinct yearned for it; burned with the need for vengeance.

But revenge was not the Jedi way. And no, he was no Jedi, but there were some parts of the Code worth following.

"No," he answered truthfully, even as it burned him to say it, "I'm not looking to take his life. Only his money. That's a more fitting punishment for him anyways."

 

[Ellie Mors]

She raised an eyebrow at that - not the question of clothes, that had admittedly slipped her mind until he had mentioned it. Maybe it was the part of her sister that lingered in her heart, or perhaps it was her family's bloody history that seemed to follow her everywhere like a shadow through the news, but she wasn't quite so certain she would let some criminal live if she'd been the one in his shoes. 'Better man than me,' She thought, shrugging at both of the man's remarks. "You're the one paying me, I can live with myself wearing the same dress for three days if it means I'm getting paid and the job gets done." Amara answered plainly.

Looking pretty and acting the part were things she'd be expected to do whenever it came time to strike a deal, but she was every bit the same underworld cockroach as the rest of the smugglers had been that they left behind at Rimmer's Rest. Knowing how to present herself in usual circumstances was, perhaps, the only difference between her and them - that and, maybe, some empathy. "Not really sure how losing some credits is just desserts for a slaver.. but I'll trust your judgment, I guess. You're the boss on this one." She added, not at all sounding like she understood where he was coming from on that one, but seemingly fine with leaving it be all the same given her immediate change in topic.

"Do you know his schedule, security, or any of that?" She asked while they walked up to the platform that The Red Night was currently parked atop. "Just need to know if we should be expecting any physical encounters or if this'll be a clean break in-and-out." Amara explained. Her attention came back toward Gatz Derrevar again at that, now that she was certain that any of the less-than-savory types that tended to linger around Nar Shaddaa after dark weren't going to be making a move on either him or her.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

"Last chance: I'm more than happy to stop so you can get some clothes and toiletries. I may not be a good man, but I'm not a monster."

Maybe it was just because he himself could be quite vain about his appearance, but Gatz found the idea of Amara not caring about a change of clothes perplexing. He was asking a lot of her, the least he could do was make sure she was comfortable on the trip there. Hell, even if they weren't about to try and pull off a high stakes heist, Gatz still would have a no problem making a detour.

Who traveled without an overnight bag?

Gatz didn't expect Amara to understand his desire to avoid killing Kragan. He couldn't blame her for that either. He'd lived the life, knew what crossing someone meant in the criminal underworld. You didn't just survive something like that. You killed someone who wronged you, and you got killed by someone you wronged. And Gatz had certainly shot more than his fair share of men.

He was better than that, though. At least, he was trying to be.

The Red Night's ostentatious hull came into view—black and red and definitely an eye catch—as they rounded a corner and finally came to the landing pad. The boarding ramp descended automatically, and Gatz knew that his astromech droid must have spotted them from the cockpit. He stopped walking, though, when Amara asked her next question.

"You should definitely expect a physical encounter," Gatz admitted, "but I'd like to do this without anyone ever seeing us. I have the floor plans of the palace, and I have codes to all the doors, but I don't have a detailed security route. I do know that Kragan isn't going to be there, though. That's why we're heading out tonight."

 

[Ellie Mors]

"If it will get your mind off of what I'm wearing then, sure, let's pick up a change of clothes on the way."

She glanced away, eyes keeping track of the seams along the flooring and the shadows that hugged against the walls, and occupied her thoughts with glimpses of a past that had kept her in the desert before flinging her into the slums of the very same planet they were leaving now. Cleanliness hadn't been an option then, and though it was definitely something she kept herself to normally it wasn't something that she had any problem with leaving behind if it needed to be pushed aside for a few days. Still, if he was going to bother offering a moment to buy a day or two's change of clothes then she might as well take him up on the offer.

The sight of the ship finally coming wholly into view was a welcome one, one that she wasn't sure was the cause of but led to her letting go of those earlier thoughts in exchange for different ones. Change, primarily.

"I'd prefer if we could do this without anyone seeing me, otherwise my face on the holonet makes this whole deal to keep you quiet a bit of a moot point." She said, almost bitterly. There was perhaps a shred of an implication there, though it wasn't one that she reinforced by suggesting anything further, but her concerns seemed closer to someone trying to stay in one place rather than someone genuinely afraid of the consequences of their actions. "That deal is sealed either way, by the way, so don't worry about me reneging on it now." Amara added conciliatorily. "How fast does this thing go, anyway?" She asked, changing the subject again. Whether she was talking about the hyperdrive or the sublight engine wasn't clear, but it was obviously small talk all the same.

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

"If I cared that much about what you're wearing I'd be trying to talk you out of your clothes, not into getting more," Gatz snorted, "I'm just trying to be nice. I like a shower and fresh clothes everyday. But if you don't, that's fine too."

Oh how he missed the days when things were simple: when his life was about credits, booze, and beautiful women. Before he cared about things like trying to do good, and being polite, and being nice. Life, ironically, felt more full back then. These days his life was just filled with stress and responsibility. He'd never go back to being a scoundrel, his guilt wouldn't let him., but... things had been a lot happier back then.

He was derailed from that train of thought by Amara bringing up her problem with being seen again. A problem that seemed to go deeper than just being recognized by Kragan Garr.

"Alright, I wasn't going to ask but... what has you so worried about being recognized?" Gatz turned toward her, "feel free to tell me it's none of my business, but do I need to be worried about being seen with you, if the worst comes to pass and we're spotted?"

Gatz stepped up the ramp into The Red Night's empty cargo bay. From there, he led Amara up the ladder to the top deck (seriously, CEC, why not stairs?). Then down the hall, and past the passenger cabins. His ship was downright spotless, aside from a few scuff marks on the deck from moving heavy cargo. There was no trash laying around, no stains or spills—not even a hair was out of place.

"How fast? Well, I've upgraded her to a Class One hyperdrive., so pretty fast. I've thought about upgrading further, but once you get below Class One, things get real pricey."

Gatz stopped at one of the passenger cabin doors.

 

[Ellie Mors]

She cocked an eyebrow at that, this time fully turning towards Gatz Derrevar to present him with her full attention. 'Didn't he ask for me, by name even?' She thought, simultaneously working through how she'd answer his question in her head - part of her brain trying to argue, if only to satisfy her own neuroticism, that anything that'd get him in trouble would have came up if he'd figured out who she was. "It's a very long story, but I don't think that you would be in any trouble for being seen with me - I think being caught robbing a kingpin would be a bit of a bigger target on your head, all things considered." She offered while he rattled off the specs the ship had from memory, trying to keep up with him on their way up the ladder - she was definitely not built for this. Unfortunately she didn't quite seem so sure of it herself, one of the the biggest insecurities almost anyone faced was how other people might view them and she was certainly no exception to that rule.

"The short version is that there was a certain Sith group that was supposedly destroying planets and was aiming to do the same thing to the entire galaxy, about ten or so years ago, and a woman that, for all intents and purposes, looked exactly like me - just with different hair, I guess - was acting as their leader til they bit the dust." Realizing how that sounded, once she said it, she quickly tried to make certain her temporary business partner didn't get the wrong idea. "She wasn't me, just so we're clear." She said quickly, though there seemed to be a massive but just waiting to be thrown in there. "..But she was my, er, sister, sort of.. maybe clone is more accurate? Strand-cast?" That was a whole can of worms she hadn't really put much thought to, it was the sort of question that brought on all kinds of existential crises. "Anyways it'd be something for me to worry about, mostly for reputation.. also for personal reasons."

Even if she was caught up in something, though, she'd already had a plan in mind for what she had planned to do if something similar had happened when she was still together with her ex - the man had, or should have, nothing to really worry about. At least not from other people, she wasn't sure if he'd piece together that it'd mean he'd asked a Zambrano for help just yet, and she hoped he never did. It wasn't with little effort that Amara had adopted an identity that separated her from her family, leaving none the wiser, and it wasn't without a lot of effort that she'd surrender the life she'd built for herself to something as petty as DNA.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons: Blaster Pistol
Tag: Ellie Mors

Gatz had heard plenty of good stories during his life. His personal favorite was the one about the smuggler who met the greatest Jedi in the galaxy, and had changed his ways and became a better man. That one didn't have an ending yet, but if a man like him could strike a friendship with Valery Noble herself, then anything under the sun had to be possible.

So... Amara had a clone who had been Sith. Roche hadn't mentioned that, but then, Roche didn't know Amara personally. The old Rodian had merely known someone who knew Amara. Still, Gatz thought that maybe that particular fact should have come up in conversation. He'd have to smack his old mentor upside the head for omitting that information.

Also for trying to kill him recently.

"Ah, so you're not a Sith?" Gatz quirked an eyebrow, "well I'm not a Jedi, so as far as I'm concerned, those are both moot points. But we'll make sure you're not spotted, or at least, not noticed."

Gatz stepped through the door into the cockpit—a small thing with a pilot and co-pilot seat, and two auxillary seats behind them. Naturally, Gatz settled down into the pilot's chair, and began to coax his ship to life.

"So," Gatz started as the engines hummed to life, "if you aren't Sith, and your pastime isn't murder and mayhem, then what do you do for fun?"

Was that any of his business? No, it wasn't. But the trip to Lok would take time, even if it wouldn't be a lot of time. And it'd be a pretty boring flight if they just sat there with their lips zipped shut. Or, well, Gatz supposed he could do a crossword puzzle or something, but that just seemed silly.