Private Shadows over Corellia

[Jason Darklighter]

"Yeah... I think."

Not a CorSec safe house. Could not trust those.

Jason only had one other option: Hutts. His lips pulled tight in a grimace. Partly pain, but mostly annoyance at having to leap from the frying pan into waters that might be boiling.

Approaching the door cautiously, the detective rapped his knuckles against it twice.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

A robotic eyeball on a mechanical stalk erupted from a slot beside the door and examined the pair of them one with an unblinking black photoreceptor.

"Haku do Uba Naga?" asked a monotone voice.

Great.

"Vota ma pateesa tuta Nal Hutta," Jason repeated the passphrase.

The robotic eyeball stared at him for a moment, then shrank back into its slot. A large thunking sound announced the unlocking of the door mechanism, then it hissed open.

Jason ducked under the doorframe and stepped hurriedly inside with 'Sam' in tow. The door slammed shut behind them ominously. Eyes adjusting to the lowlit interior, Jason began searching the furnished studio. The place was a little sparse, no decorations except an odd painting on the wall. Looked like there was a bed that pulled out from the wall. And there was a walk-in sanisteam. Jason didn't care about any of that at the moment.

"Make yourself comfortable," he muttered, "That door is reinforced. Even if those troopers track us here, they aren't coming in without a lightsaber."

The odds unfortunately seemed relatively high, considering they were Sith agents.

Grimacing again, Jason started rifling through the kitchenette trying to find a medkit.

Solara Gale

 

[Solara Gale]

Huttese.

Sol frowned but kept a lookout behind them. No movement of sith troopers from the mouth of the alley. But she couldn't step over that threshold too soon as it hissed opened. Her shoulders finally relaxed as the door sealed shut behind them. Pale eyes giving the room a quick run-over. Gingerly peeling her brown jacket off and left with a slim, dark grey shirt she stood near the trash compactor, which was parked on the wall near the kitchenette. Carefully, she began picking out the shards of glass and dropping them into the awaiting machine to crunch and grind up.

Eyes flickered to Jason as he searched.

After a quiet beat, her lips parted.

"Solara is my name."

Clink-clink-clink went the glass

"I haven't been able to use it since I left the jedi."

Clink-clink-clink

"And I wonder now if what happened to me was no accident. If I was getting close to finding something out."

 

[Jason Darklighter]

There.

A cabinet cluttered with junk yielded a small med kit. Jason pulled it out and opened it. He shrugged out of his trenchcoat and set it on the counter, then started cleaning his wound as he listened to the Jedi. Well... former Jedi apparently.

"Nice to meet you, Solara," he replied, sourly.

Not the first time a source has lied to me.

"Only thing I figure is who else knew you were going to be there. Me, you... and our mutual friend in CorSec."

Jason hated to think it, but when the shoe fits...

"Unless someone else knew? What was it you were looking for?"

If she'd been following a lead, then she was right. This might have been a two birds, one stone opportunity to take out both of them at the same time.

Solara Gale

 

[Solara Gale]

A small flinch as she felt his miffness beyond his tone.

Pffft. He had no idea what she'd been through.

But she recognized enough to know his feelings weren't about her. Most likely the whole situation and the getting blasted part.

"No one. Only Alen." Stepping around him to the refresher, she snapped on the water and began washing his blood off her hands. Then she got to work on her jacket. It was clear, the small things she did own, she didn't take 'em for granted.

"I kept getting these messages from someone who claimed to be a Shadow. When I was at the Academy. I was trying to figure out who it was. And why they were sent to me." Lips pressed closed as she thought better about sharing more. "I'm not safe to be around," looking over her shoulder pointedly at his wound, she shut the water off.

Then began foraging for food.

 

[Jason Darklighter]

“Hm.”

A contact claiming to be a shadow?

That did not feel right.

Tossing the wrapping of a bacta pad in the trash, Jason applied it to his wound and grit his teeth against the pain as cold bacta jelly squelched into roasted tissue and muscle. He could not hold back a small grunt and clenched his eyes. The sensation lessened somewhat as the numbing effects of the pad’s adhesive took effect around the wound.

Rolling his shoulder experimentally, Jason looked over at Solara who came out of washing her hands and jacket off to start rummaging around the kitchenette for food.

She could still eat at a time like this?

Or maybe getting shot just gave him a loss of appetite.

“Unless you’re being tracked some other way, all signs point to Alen.”

Damn it.

“Normally I’d try to find a reason to get him alone, or stake him out. I don’t think we have that kind of time or resources though. Do you still have access to your old Jedi records from the Order? Old holomail accounts, databases… that kind of thing?”

If she had any residual data on a device, he might be able to use that to try to determine who this shadow was who had been reaching out to her.

The better idea would be to make a list of all shadows, but that kind of material would be incredibly hard to come by if it even existed.

Solara Gale

 

[Solara Gale]

Sol didn't answer right away.

She kept searching cupboards with the casual persistence of someone who'd learned long ago that abandoned safehouses always hid something. A sealed ration bar. Half a bag of caf beans gone stale. Finally—

"Gotcha."

Triumph came in the form of two vacuum-packed nerf jerky strips tucked behind a stack of chipped mugs. She pocketed one and tore the other open with her teeth. Not exactly a feast to help her recover from the force she'd used but it would have to do.

The first bite gave her something to do besides think.

His question lingered.

"No."

She swallowed.

"When I left... I left."

There hadn't been much worth taking besides the clothes on her back. The Order had been her life. Walking away had meant accepting she'd never really belong there again. Holomail accounts, archived lessons, access codes—those had all become someone else's.

She leaned against the counter, turning the unopened ration strip over in her hands.

"Anything tied to the Order would've been deactivated years ago." A small shrug followed. "Or someone smarter than me changed the passwords."

A faint smile tugged at one corner of her mouth before disappearing.

"I kept the messages."

Pale eyes lifted to him.

"Not on the Academy network. I copied them onto a different server because..." She hesitated, realizing how obsessive it had probably looked. "...because they didn't feel like a prank. Something just didn't feel right before things happened." And instinct. Something before that day of betrayal must've sparked her instincts to copy up things. And it's a good thing she had or else she would've had no evidence left. Of anything.

Her thumb traced the edge of the ration packet.

"If we can get access to a public terminal, I can get them."

Then, quieter:

"If whoever sent them wanted me dead, they had plenty of chances before today."

She looked toward the sealed door, listening to the silence beyond it.

"Which makes me think they wanted me to find something first."

Her gaze settled back on Jason.