The Saints of Smuggling

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Ringovinda StarYards being based on a planet in position to take some refugees from the Core, it was natural for Ringovinda StarYards to be in the business of selling ships that could be used in smuggling refugees. Understandably, her secretary, Marcia, was there to take minutes and, although her technical expertise lies in avionics and hardware interfacing, she was still to be there, and on a rather short leash. Charzon is mostly interested in the budget this new client had, as well as their needs. Its representative is coming into the Ringo Vinda head office, in the ring station in orbit over the planet. Which was simple enough to navigate, unlike the Banking Clan's headquarters on Muunilinst, which was a maze (but she nevertheless landed the company's big sale there).

"Greetings, Mr. Myrishi. it is an honor to meet you in person. It has come to my attention that you are seeking ships to smuggle refugees and/or cargo out of One Sith territory"

He doesn't know that Ringo Vinda, as an endpoint market for smuggling refugees, was controlled mostly by Star Tours; his company could establish its base on Veradune for all that she cared. And Marcia knew Star Tours inside out, and not just because Star Tours has a hub on that planet, so she could fill in any gaps Charzon had about how Star Tours optimized the capacity of their products for smuggling refugees and other merchandise.

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

"Precautions" might as well have been Yusanis Myrishi's middle name. Mom and Dad wouldn't much approve of the cadence, he supposed, but they were dead.

And so it was that the cloaked figure who arrived to the offices of Ringovinda StarDrive was not, in fact, the elusive director of SAINT. As the bulky hooded jacket that had covered his representative was set aside by the conference room door, it was revealed to be a tall protocol droid, gleaming black on silver. "My apologies," the droid intoned. "My master must be extremely cautious, given the nature of his work. He means no disrespect. I am carrying a holocomm that will allow for direct communication." It was a risk to work a business deal this way, as it could be construed as rude. But Yusanis had no intention of seeing his crusade carelessly ended.

The protocol droid raised an ornate arm and unclenched its fist, revealing a small cylindrical device. The holocomm hummed to life, eerie blue light floating up from within it to create the image of a hooded, indistinct figure. Even his true face was an asset the smuggling ringleader had no intent of disclosing unnecessarily. "Ms. Loulan," he began, his voice somewhat distorted and laggy from the half-dozen position disguising devices that were masking the transmission's origin, "thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Please let me offer a further apology for not attending personally; I have many enemies who would be eager to find me in the open."

The droid raised its other arm, producing an elegant glass bottle filled with a golden liquid. "I hope you'll accept this Corellian reserve as a token of my esteem and my hopes for a fruitful partnership." It was not an inexpensive gesture; with Corellia destroyed, prices for the last remaining bottles of the already upscale liquor had jumped to astronomical heights. As the droid placed the bottle delicately down on the conference room table, the hologram began to speak once more. "I see that you know what I want. For reasons that should be clear, any deal between us will have to be based on trust. I need you to keep my goals secret, or your ships can't help me."

Breaking through the facial distortion, Yusanis's golden cybernetic eye gleamed briefly before vanishing into the static of his hood. "Can we agree to that upfront?"

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Oh, certainly, we could agree to that upfront. I appreciate the gesture, and I accept the bottle of golden drink, knowing that the drink is expensive" Charzon said, stowing the bottle of Corellian reserve into the office's safe, located into the office's wall. She swore not to drink it until Ringovinda StarYards reached a certain size. She knew better than to consume a treasure of the alcoholic world. The bottle she was given would be worth almost as much, if not more, than a Bowser-class ship, so certainly north of half a million credits. And that was only a Corellia-standard bottle (i.e. 700ml); a bottle at Nar Shaddaa standard (1.75 L) would be worth 2.5 times as much, if only because there was 2.5 times as much content.

"There is one thing I must tell you: you probably want to use the ships the same way Star Tours would. Most of the time, the capacities listed in the Factory Canon, or the Factory for short, are making inefficient usage of a ship's capabilities with respect to passenger and cargo capacity. Star Tours is known galaxy-wide to find creative ways to make the most efficient use of what we call the "pay-space", that is, the internal space devoted to the payload"

She hands the droid a brochure highlighting the differences between what is listed in the Factory and what they actually use with their two classes of ships, both of which are Ringovinda StarYards products; for instance, Star Tours operate Pullman-class commuter freighters with 166 passengers and 20 tons of cargo whereas the Factory listed it at 100 passengers under the same caveat. However, using it in full for cargo is 500 tons. Rumor has it that they would want to purchase Tofolk-class ships to run the Coruscant routes (to JanFathal, Ringo Vinda, Tatooine via Nar Shaddaa and Eriadu) because they can't keep up with the demand.

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

A slight smile curved onto Yusanis's face, barely visible beneath the distortion. "If you're capable of greater efficiency, it seems I came to the right people."

The droid accepted the brochure, its ocular receptors scanning the information and transmitting it back to the Director's hidden location. He glanced over the readouts, his mechanical eye and his organic one moving eerily out of sync as he read, and nodded. "Impressive. But my requirements go beyond simple capacity. I need to be able to hide certain passengers from prying eyes, both outside inspectors and even other passengers. Can some of this additional space be used stealthily?" It was a vital question; in order for the Acanthus project to work, refugees would have to be concealed on the same starships that hosted scores of loyal Imperial citizens.

Yusanis leaned forward intently. "We are, of course, willing to pay higher than the standard rate if the ships can be modified to conceal passengers." It was something that SAINT technicians could accomplish, but that used valuable time and resources better spent on other projects. Far better if they could buy the ships with hidden passenger compartments already installed. "I understand that your company is preparing to release a new starship onto the market, the Tofolk-class. These would be ideal for our purposes given their considerable size. Perhaps we could work out a bulk discount; we're willing to buy a significant number of them once they hit the market."

Those ships would be the basis of the Acanthus project, if only Yusanis could secure them without breaking the bank...

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Charzon would think that the Novroskis would break the bank; after all, according to the newly-released Outlaw's Guide to Freighters, the Novroski was described as being "slow and expensive" as she would expect from a freighter capable of being outfitted for 50,000 tons of cargo or 1,700 passengers. Star Tours would easily cram both and then some; the one thing they couldn't circumvent was volume. And Star Tours got the Factory Judges to accept that Pullmans could haul 500 tons whereas past entries for ships that size were for at most half that amount, and single-decked ships in that size category would often haul about 100-150 tons. But the Tofolk-class cost only 1/10 as much as a Novroski did.

"For passenger smuggling features, what we can do on the Tofolk-class is to offer retractable smuggling panels, which are also used to smuggle cargo; you will find all our products for the freight market to offer modularity such that operators would haul many things at once and still manage to compartmentalize what is legitimate and what is smuggling. What Star Tours does with the panels that you might want to do is that they often put as few as two or three passengers inside a section enclosed by retractable panels, depending on how the seats so enclosed are positioned with respect to the aisles. Oh and the seats themselves have the same ability for retractability as the smuggling panels"

Marcia, who stood just beside Charzon, took into account that retractable smuggling panels was adding an extra layer of modularity on top of devoting the pay-space to pax vs. cargo. But at the same time, any bulk discount would have to be weighed against the number of Tofolks they would be looking to order. She knew that, canonically, 600 passengers could be carried, in the same size class as the CR70/90, or 7,500 tons of cargo, but with Star Tours, 7,500 tons can easily become 25,000 or 600 passengers can become 4,000, as she prepared the Tofolk version of the brochure that the droid had in Pullman and in Bowser versions.

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

Yusanis nodded, listening intently. Retractable panels to conceal smuggling compartments would be ideal, provided that they were difficult to notice. A screen of loyal Imperial passengers could crown the main cabin, listening to pro-Sith propaganda and swearing up and down that everyone on the ship was a faithful citizen of the Empire, while refugees and relief supplies were hidden all around them. The irony was amusing, though risk remained: any malfunction of the panels or carelessness in loading the secret cargo would mean the whole game was up, and probably unravel the entire project. Everything would have to be done with extreme caution. As usual.

"That sounds workable," he finally replied. "Perhaps we could arrange to order twenty of the craft, if the price is right." Twenty ships would provide the small startup tour company with enough ships to consistently run three or four routes, with a few of them at a time bearing secret cargoes that could be unloaded and transferred to safe locations when the ships went off-tour for "maintenance." It would not be an easy journey for refugees from Sith space; they might have to wait in near-silence in the smuggling compartments for a week or more until the tour ended. But compared to what they'd been through under Sith persecution, well, they'd survive.

Yusanis's eyes widened a bit at the Ringovinda CEO's claims about the true maximum capacity of the Tofolk-class. With six hundred passengers, SAINT could conceal perhaps thirty refugees safely. In a crowd of four thousand, they could manage five times that or more, plus cargo and supplies to keep them well-fed and comfortable. Logistical calculations shifted gears without the clutch in his mind, spinning wildly off into new possibilities. If he could get those twenty ships, he could do more good in a standard month than he had in years of smuggling refugees alone. The only question now was price.

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Did I forget to mention that the smuggling panels were soundproofed? The passengers being carried inside the smuggling panels would not hear about pro-Sith propaganda being shown outside. Due to the cost of smuggling options, any bulk discounts would be negated for that quantity of ships. For the cost of 20 million credits total, I have to inquire about whether you would like to hear about financing options or you would rather pay for each individual ship on delivery, one million apiece"

She knew that both Acanthus Military Tourism and Star Tours wouldn't even put a dent into the sheer number of refugees these two carriers would need to haul. There were billions that wanted a way out of One Sith space, and the premium charged by Star Tours as of late is a reflection of the huge strain on their network, especially on the Coruscant routes. JanFathal, Ringo Vinda, Eriadu, Nar Shaddaa, even "fringe" destinations such as Elysian and Galtea were becoming overwhelmingly chosen for refuge from the One Sith. But they mustn't forget that the most common financing options were three years or five years, with the lower APR on shorter-term financing and the higher APR on the long-term financing. These options were usually offered to orders of small quantities of ships; customized options were available on bulk orders.

On the other hand, Marcia had no expertise in starship financing so she would need to transfer the matter to the billing department (or "accounts receivable" as they were called by the company's chief accountant, much like the "accounts payable" team was tasked with the disbursement of funds to suppliers) of which the bulk purchasing specialist was called in. And the last two bulk purchases she personally negotiated were from clients that paid in full before the construction of their ships even started. The bulk purchase financing specialist was brought in.

"This is Kolda, our bulk purchase financing specialist"

"Looking to buy Tofolks before Star Tours does? For twenty Tofolk-class ships, as my boss said, we can offer customized financing if you cannot afford to pay for these new ships upfront"

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

Yusanis nodded again, running calculations in his mind. The two-way soundproofing was an added bonus that would both increase the refugees' comfort and make them harder to detect. As for the negation of the bulk discount due to the smuggling modifications, that was to be expected. Actually, it was a pretty good deal; he had been expecting the stealth additions to raise the price. The questions was whether he could take the risk of paying for it all gradually through financing. On the one hand, it would significantly reduce the burden on SAINT's limited resources. There were never enough credits to help everyone who needed it, and every credit spared here could save more lives.

On the other hand, financing would leave a paper trail that simply paying in hard currency at the time of purchase would not. It wouldn't be openly suspicious for Acanthus to buy transports; the entire point of the cover was that they were a tour company, after all, and such companies bought new ships whenever needed. But if someone was already suspicious of the company and decided to look into where their startup credits had come from, well, that could be trouble. They could mask the donors most effectively if there was no record of where their credits had gone; open accounts that gradually paid Ringovinda back were something of a security risk that could lead to compromised identities.

It was a decision he would have to weigh carefully. "I remain interested," he began. "What rates and timeframes do you offer for financing?"

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Kolda took the floor, after reviewing the order. "For three years, APR is 3.4%, for five years, APR is 4.9% and for 10 years, APR is 6.8%. Payments are to be paid every month or every week, once the selection is made, you may revert to the other mode at the cost of making the payment for the next period so chosen. The payment for that period will be considered made"

Kolda was perhaps the one that worked the least in the "accounts receivable" team and, unlike Star Tours or Acanthus Military, a shipyard has a lot less clients to look after as far as accounts receivable are concerned, as compared to a spaceline. He knew that, if Star Tours decided to go the financing route in purchasing the key ship(s) its participation in Operation Noah's Ark, Star Tours may well end up having to pay their participation in this adventure for decades. That's if Star Tours is even part of Operation Noah's Ark in the first place; there are rumors that they ordered a feasibility study for constructing what is codenamed within Ringovinda StarYards as a "maximum battleship" before deciding whether they even want to take a more central role in this. She wasn't Force-sensitive but she knew about the atrocities committed by the One Sith when she hears about employees gossiping about where the next orders may come from, and why they may have such orders to make.

"Oh, and I understand that it's a major investment. Please take your time. The APRs offered are about what you would have found at other shipyards, and you got the best deal in the galaxy for smuggling panels"

Even though said shipyards may not have offered smuggling panels at the cost of a bulk discount, or even offered smuggling panels at all. For example, at Mandal Hypernautics, last she heard about it, she heard smuggling panels would cost twice that level of bulk discount, and Rendili StarDrive or Eshel Drive Yards would not even think about offering those. Some unscrupulous shipyards would have raised their APRs for everyone buying the option of smuggling panels, and the topic of insurance makes it an even touchier topic.

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

Three years. Quietly, in the back of his mind, Yusanis wondered if he and his organization would survive that long.

The rates were reasonable, even generous. SAINT could certainly afford to make the payments each standard month, so long as nothing went badly wrong. That left the question: should he leave these starships as a gradual drain, or eliminate the paper trail and consider the vast cost to be part of start-up expenses? What if an emergency operation cost more than they had after buying the ships? But what if the fee to hire a captain brought them consistently over-budget each month when combined with the interest payments? Neither was an attractive situation, but risking one or the other would be necessary. The paper trail, however, might be manageable.

"A three-year contract with monthly payments would work well for us," the Echani finally decided, "but we will need to keep the contract itself extremely secure. Each month we will send a representative to your offices to pay in hard currency. The contract itself should list only Acanthus Military Tourism and Ringovinda StarYards as the two parties involved, with no mention of my name or my organization. Are these terms acceptable?" Hard currency, unlike the endless slicer-accessible web that was virtual credit banking, was effectively untraceable if properly managed. It was but one more concern in Yusanis's long life of perpetual risk management.

But this one could pay off in lives saved, and so he focused on the positives.

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"For that to work it might be best if Acanthus opened a route to Ringo Vinda on at least a monthly basis so that, each month, the amount in hard credits will arrive in the accounts receivable office and the representative uses or works onboard an otherwise regular flight. Plus Ringo Vinda's ability to take refugees will not be exceeded with an extra 150 refugees per flight. But I can otherwise agree to have the contract only list Acanthus Military Tourism and us, in exchange for a non-disclosure clause"

The program Charzon uses in her datapad to draft contracts also calculates the payments for a given APR, when used in conjunction with financing. According to the contract that is being drafted, Ringovinda StarYards thus receives 586k credits a month for 36 months. Most of the time, people who made use of financing were eccentric individuals looking for a starship to call their own, but maintenance is not an issue. A non-disclosure clause was to be added, which would, in effect, force both parties not to disclose the terms of the contract with the One Sith. She knew that she was rather uncomfortable around the One Sith and hence ceased selling ships to the One Sith. But Acanthus, while operating within OS space, would not violate her pledge, since the pledge only extends to the One Sith military.

"I hope that we can agree to a non-disclosure clause regarding the One Sith: neither Acanthus nor us are to tell the OS about this deal in any shape or form"

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]

 

[Yusanis Myrishi]

Yusanis nearly laughed at the mention of a non-disclosure clause. "We have at least as much to lose if the Sith find out about this deal," he replied. "They won't hear about it from us. As for the rest, Acanthus will establish an office on Ringo Vinda to provide the monthly payments." It was as good a deal as they were going to get, and the Echani was satisfied; they had secured an opportunity to save no small number of lives, and they had done it at a relatively low cost while maintaining their own shroud of secrecy. "Thank you all for your time," he said. "My droid will take care of any paperwork. Is there anything else that needs to be discussed?"

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Maybe Acanthus would have laughed at the notion of a non-disclosure clause but Ringovinda StarYards had their reasons, which are specific to them and to them only. The main risk would not have come from Acanthus, but from Ringovinda StarYards. For some reason, Star Tours would not be as uncomfortable around the One Sith even though they, too, are using Ringovinda StarYards products to whisk away refugees under their very noses, be it on Coruscant or elsewhere. Perhaps because, despite whisking away refugees from One Sith space, they manage to gouge the refugees and are still paying taxes on spacefares paid by the refugees they whisk away. Even though Charzon expected this from Neimoidian elements within the One Sith, Neimoidians were among the refugees.

"No, there is nothing else to be discussed. We have agreed on the terms of delivery and payment. Now that I've taken the liberty of signing the contract thus drafted, may the Force be with us all... even though I can't use it"

[member="Yusanis Myrishi"]