Private The Moonlight Ledger

[Zara Voss]

“The Gilded Ghost”

Nar Shaddaa never slept. It only changed masks. The Vertical City above was all polished transparisteel, rivers of neon, and pleasure dens built for beings with more credits than caution. But beneath that gleaming skin—between the casino terraces and private docking galleries—there were pockets where the moon showed its true face. Service balconies forgotten by architects. Lounge annexes used for meetings no one wanted recorded. Smoke-stained corners where the city hummed not with music, but with generators, vent fans, and the distant scream of speeders diving through traffic lanes.

Zara Voss preferred those places. They smelled honest. Or as honest as Nar Shaddaa ever managed. She stood near the edge of a half-abandoned overlook tucked behind a shuttered luxury cantina, one hand resting lightly against the black railing while endless towers of light burned in the abyss beyond. Purple advertisements crawled across neighboring skyscrapers. Holo-dancers flickered fifty stories below. Somewhere far beneath, a siren wailed and cut itself short. The whole moon pulsed like a living vice wrapped around the galaxy’s throat.

Her posture was still. Everything else in her was not. The skintight bodysuit she wore left no room for wasted fabric or misplaced motion—matte black from throat to boot, tailored so close it looked poured over her curves, with subtle graphite seam lines catching what little amber light leaked from the cantina door behind her. It was not armor. Armor suggested preparation for a fair fight. Zara had long ago learned that fair fights were for idiots and idealists. This was simply efficient: easy to move in, easy to conceal tools beneath, and more than fitted enough to ensure that if conversation became negotiation, she still held the stronger opening hand.

A small data spike rested between two gloved fingers as she turned it idly. Turned. Stopped. Turned again. Impatience had always been one of her uglier habits. Unfortunately, Nar Shaddaa encouraged ugly habits.

Her feelers had gone out three nights ago through the Dark Holo—carefully phrased, carefully obscured, routed through enough false channels to make tracing them back a chore reserved for the obsessive. She needed a slicer. Not some overconfident basement code-jockey with delusions of grandeur, but someone who knew how to work under pressure, cut through private security, and preferably keep her mouth shut when the credits landed.

The responses had been, as expected, abysmal. Frauds. Junkies. One Gran who spent most of his message describing his “ethical flexibility” as though that were a selling point rather than a prerequisite.

Then an intermediary she trusted just enough not to kill on sight had sent a single name.

Shot Sutaz.

No glowing recommendation. No poetic assurances. Just: She gets into places she shouldn’t. Good enough. Usually the most competent criminals had the fewest adjectives attached to them. Her amber eyes drifted from the cityline to the chrono projected faintly against the inside of her wrist.

Late. That earned a quiet exhale through her nose. Zara pushed away from the railing and began a slow prowl across the overlook, boots whispering over black metal plating. She hated waiting almost as much as she hated relying on strangers, and tonight she had the misfortune of indulging both.

Still...The job justified inconvenience. Her fingers closed around the data spike. Inside it was not the ledger itself, only fragments—enough rumor, enough stolen snippets, enough cross-confirmed whispers to tell her the same delicious thing from six different directions:

A Hutt-affiliated financial broker named Ordo Venn had vanished. Before vanishing, Venn had hidden something worth killing for. Encrypted account routes. Blackmail records. Syndicate laundering paths. Private client identities.

A shard of information so dense with leverage that whoever held it would not merely make credits. They could print obligations. Sell secrets. Start wars in the right circles. Or survive very comfortably by threatening to.

The broker’s silent partner, however, had allegedly recovered the physical ledger core and tucked it away in a private vault suite somewhere inside one of Vertical City’s upper casino habs while entertaining bids from interested buyers.

Meaning the score was moving. Meaning every hour increased the chance some Hutt, Vigo, or corporate degenerate bought it first. Meaning Zara was now dependent on a slicer she had never met arriving on time to help her steal a small fortune from under Nar Shaddaa’s jeweled nose.

She smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. Danger made her feel alive. Danger attached to obscene profit made her almost charitable.

A gust of recycled night air curled through the overlook, stirring the loose ends of the dark half-cloak draped from one shoulder of the bodysuit. Below, a cargo tram roared between towers like a metal insect. Above, somewhere in the labyrinth of upper promenades, bass-heavy music thudded through club walls.

Vertical City carried on, oblivious. For now. Zara returned to the railing and leaned back against it, crossing one ankle over the other with studied indifference she did not feel. One gloved hand slipped casually near the holdout blaster hidden at her lower spine. The other rolled the data spike once more between her fingers.

If Shot Sutaz turned out to be incompetent, she would know within the first thirty seconds. If she turned out to be useful... Then perhaps tonight became profitable.

Her gaze lifted toward the access corridor leading into the overlook, voice sliding into the darkness before the approaching figure had even fully appeared.

“Tell me,” she called, smooth as silk and twice as dangerous, “are you the slicer I was promised, or am I about to be disappointed again?”

Zara Voss

• Location: Vertical City, Nar Shaddaa
• Objective: Recruit slicer for job
• Outfit: Black Bodysuit
• Company: Shot Sutaz

 

[Shot Sutaz]

THE SLICER​

Yet another job sent her way from her fixer. That hag was on a roll this month, though most of the jobs were much more boring than this. Not to mention much less profitable. The premise of the job was just interesting enough that she was willing to entertain an initial meeting. The person who sent out the job would be the final deciding factor on whether or not she took it. This was not the sort of job she would do with an ambitious rookie. She quite liked what was left of her head where it was and she wasn't going to let an inexperienced coworker ruin what flesh she had left.

These thoughts floated through her mind as she sat in the back of a taxi that was making it's way through the bustling traffic of Nar Shadaa, driven by one of the cab company's standard issue droids. She was going through her gear prep check list while on the way to her destination. First was the tool case disguised as a cigarette holder. It served as a small metal binder of sorts, with multiple pages full of tool slots. She clicked it open, fingers gently perusing through all the tools, ranging from slicing spikes for all different types of terminals, all the way to a set of genuine analog lockpicks.

Next came her cybernetics. Her ran a hand through her tendrils, taking each in her palm one by one as she made sure they were properly flexible and limber, the tools within them slotted properly into place. Checking by hand was the only option since the roof of the cab prevented there from being enough room to stretch the tendrils properly. All the while, a diagnostic scan ran via the mechanical portion of her brain, spreadsheets and schematics displayed in the UI of her cybernetic right eye that only she could see.

The final check was her last resort. Something she only really had use for if she wasn't doing her job correctly. She drew the blaster from it's holster on her hip. An A-180. It was a simple, dependable blaster pistol, but lightweight while still packing a punch. It served all the situations where she needed to use a blaster. Any situation where it didn't work was one where she'd be better off fleeing anyways. She clicked it open, holding the gas canister up to her flesh left eye. She lets out a slight hum of satisfaction before cocking it shut and sliding the pistol back into it's holster.

She was brough from her thoughts by the distinct hum of the cab coming to a stop. Her void gaze drifts to her left, peering out of the window into the dimly lit location. An old run down cantina. A faint smile tugged at her lips. That was a good start. A lot of the rookies bought a private booth at some bustling hotspot. While that worked for typical merc work or a low end heist, the job this person was toting called for much more caution and a much lower possibility of prying ears. She was glad whoever was hiring her for this job seemed to share the sentiment.

Sutaz clipped the 'cigarette case' onto the belt that was about her waist before opening the door, heeled boots clicking on the platform as she slipped out of the vehicle. As she did so, one of her tendrils opened at the tip, a data spike extending out of it as the tentacle reaches over the seat to inject straight into a port that was on the back of the droid's head. The droid's memory of her ever having been a client would delete itself from the bank. Just like that, the tendril closed once more and returned to hanging limply over her shoulder.

"Thanks for the ride." She stated with wry humor as the cab drove off, her arms reaching above her head in a stretch with her hand grabbing her elbow, one hip jutted out to the side, then swaying to the other.

Once satisfied, she made her way to the cantina entrance. The door was locked, but that was no matter. Once again, that dataspike tendril injected itself into the door lock, and it slipped open. She made sure it would lock behind her as she stepped inside. It was stuffy, dusty, and rusty. It also seemed to be empty. She wasn't given a direct meeting spot. Her cybernetic right eye flicks through a few vision settings as she peers about. Finally, thermals catch a signature on the overlook outside.

The contact's voice reached her as she made her way through the back door, causing her head to tilt somewhat. Zara would be faced with an interesting creature as she stepped into the dim light projected from the adjacent buildings and holograms. A light yet deep purple nautolan. She was dressed in a similar bodysuit to Zara herself, though this one seemed to be textured more like a wetsuit of sorts in comparison to her shining matte black. Yet it clung to her appealing curves all the same. Over it, she wore a white short tailed and short sleeved jacket, with a simple belt about her waist that held a few pouches, a cigarette case, and extended down to a thigh band that held a holster into place for her A-180. A pair of knee high, black leather, heeled boots finished the look. Though their shared appreciation of pleasingly skin tight attire wasn't the most interesting sight to be found on the nautolan.

Despite the accuracy of the synthetic skin, it was easy to tell she was rocking cybernetics all over. Even with her bodysuit covering all of her body. Just from her face and tendrils alone. Various lines, most of them straight with the occasional turn, could be seen. Gaps in between joints on her cybernetic tendrils, or the gap between machine faceplate and flesh in the case of the ones that went down the sides of her face. Yet despite those gaps, it was hard to tell which part separated which. Where the flesh ended and the cybernetics began.

She huffs, expression unimpressed as she juts hip out to the side, resting a hand on it.

"Well that's a trap of a question, isn't it? Answering it positively makes me look like an overconfident idiot, answering it negatively makes me look like an unreliable deadweight." She waves a hand dismissively.

"Besides, I should be asking you something similar. This isn't a simple smash and grab we're looking at. We very well could die no matter how good either of us are." She smirks slightly, showing off sharp nautolan teeth, Though who knew how many were real. Her voice was even, but somewhat chirpy. It had a slight accent of sorts to it that was pleasant as silk on the ears.

​

 

[Zara Voss]

“The Gilded Ghost”

Zara’s eyes moved over Shot Sutaz slowly, carefully, the same way a sabacc player studied a hand they had not yet decided whether to trust. The nautolan certainly made an entrance. Not loud. Not theatrical. Competent. That alone already placed her above most beings Zara dealt with on Nar Shaddaa.

Her gaze lingered perhaps half a second longer than strictly necessary along the curves outlined by the textured bodysuit before more practical observations settled into place behind her amber eyes. Fashionable, yes, but functional. The kind of outfit that understood Nar Shaddaa’s particular social ecosystem. Stylish enough to move through upper-tier spaces without looking cheap, fitted enough not to snag while climbing through maintenance shafts or sprinting through blaster fire. Useful.

The holstered A-180 earned a brief glance next. Not ideal. But expected. Someone needed to be capable of shooting their way out once the evening inevitably stopped behaving itself, and Zara had no intention of volunteering for the role personally. If things reached the point where she was firing a blaster, something had already gone catastrophically wrong.

The cybernetics received no visible reaction whatsoever. Neither admiration nor concern. Cybernetics were tools. Good ones could elevate a slicer into something terrifying. Bad ones merely turned fools into expensive corpses. The determining factor had always been the mind attached to the machinery. And Shot, at the very least, sounded intelligent. That mattered far more.

At the Nautolan’s answer, Zara’s lips curved upward before a soft laugh escaped her—smooth, low, genuinely amused rather than mocking. “There’s the truth of it,” she said lightly. “I value honesty far more than humility.”

Her eyes flicked once toward the tendrils, then back to Shot’s face. “And that answer tells me you’re probably not going to disappoint me.” The data spike vanished into a hidden seam of her bodysuit as Zara pushed herself off the railing. The movement was fluid, predatory without trying to be. Nar Shaddaa had taught her years ago that confidence was currency, and hesitation got picked apart by scavengers.

“You’re right,” she continued. “This isn’t a simple smash-and-grab.”

A faint grin touched her mouth. “But I’m very good at what I do.” She stepped closer—not invading space, merely drawing the conversation inward, away from the open skyline and the endless glow of the Vertical City.

“And when I prove it,” Zara added, “there won’t be any smashing involved. Just grabbing.” Her gaze drifted briefly toward the distant towers above them where luxury casinos glittered like jeweled traps suspended over the abyss.

“We may need to run once someone realizes what we’ve taken,” she admitted. “But personally, I prefer misdirection over charging through problems. Much cleaner. Much less exhausting. And usually far more profitable.”

The smile she gave Shot then was sharper. “We avoid detection instead of surviving it.”

A passing cargo transport rumbled somewhere below the overlook, vibrating faintly through the metal beneath their feet. Zara waited for the sound to fade before continuing. “There’s danger, naturally,” she said. “But not the reckless sort. No suicidal improvisation. No blind dives into security kill-boxes. We do this intelligently.”

Her tone shifted subtly then—less teasing, more business. “I’ve already secured entry into the casino hab. Tomorrow night there’s a private sabacc event for high-rollers and invitation-only clientele. Wealthy criminals convincing each other they’re respectable.”

A quiet chuckle. “My alias for the evening is Shiri Vel.” The name rolled off her tongue effortlessly, practiced enough to sound lived-in. “Exotic performer turned broker of rare acquisitions. Wealthy. Connected. Just scandalous enough that people remember me, but not enough to question why I’m there.”

Her eyes glimmered. “I already have the invitation.” Zara slowly folded her arms. “From there, I get us close to the vault suite and the guests tied to the ledger auction. While everyone’s distracted drinking, gambling, and pretending they’re more important than they are...” she tilted her head slightly, “…we take our loot.”

“So tonight I need you to tell me what technical complications might arise before we’re standing in front of them.” Another step closer brought the neon glow across one side of her face. “Because tomorrow,” she said softly, “we walk straight into the belly of the beast.”

A small smile returned. “And with any luck, my silver tongue keeps us invisible long enough to rob it blind.”

Zara Voss

• Location: Vertical City, Nar Shaddaa
• Objective: Recruit slicer for job
• Outfit: Black Bodysuit
• Company: Shot Sutaz