Retrieval

[Wei Wu Wei]

Wei Wu Wei was only half surprised when he got the message on his comm.

Please report to Alliance Intelligence to be briefed on a mission that requires your skills and background.

The Force Cripple responded promptly: one short shuttle ride later, and the Force Cripple found himself standing in a briefing room going over documents and listening to a very excited officer explain the mission he would be undertaking with his partner, who sat to his left.

Her name was Mara. He remembered her from his first day at the Wheel--she and a small security squad greeted him in his antiquated Jedi starfighter. Too bad he couldn't remember if they had introduced themselves before. If it hadn't been for the fact that her name was printed clearly at the top of the mission brief, he wouldn't have known her name.

"Are you sure you want me on this mission? Sure, I suppose what I did in the Clone Wars counted as espionage, but mostly I just looked bland, caused a distraction, and blew things up."

"Extracting this..." his voice trailed off as he scanned the document on his datapad again, "Tavus Xilarius, this high-ranking defector, might prove more of a challenge than we realize."

"Is there no way to retrieve him after he has been delivered to his current destination?"

[Mara Tallen]

She wasn't surprised that she'd received a summons from Command, but the nature of it was surprising indeed. Stealth and tact weren't precisely her cup of tea or her strengths.

Mara was a demolitions expert and a Vanguard, for love of the stars. She blew things up and shot things down...and generally even those areas of expertise got her into trouble half the time. She generally did so with a great deal of enthusiasm and often not enough thought.

Blinking, she shrugged, dropping her bag in a locker in the shuttle hangar. Having only just come over from the Novgorod, the Captain hadn't anticipated being summoned and sent out so quickly. So much for a little time to herself, but...such was the life she chose and more than loved.

Fingers ran through her hair as she sat beside one of the few Jedi she recognized on sight. Wei had arrived with some decidedly interesting fanfare a while back, and she'd been part of the official greeting party. She nodded to him, before casting her amber gaze back to the datapad in front of her. She mostly tuned out the over-enthusiastic officer who would have been more at home in a travel agent's office than the military, arching a brow as the Jedi piped up with a concern.

"Distractions and blowing things up? Excellent. We have that much in common, then." Mara offered with a smile, tapping a finger across the screen. "I don't think we have much of a choice but to go in before he actually gets there. The Imperial presence where he's going would demand more than just you and I to get him out. Providing of course that the intel is right, this time."

Wrinkling her nose, she read further into the document and muttered under her breath in Mando'a. This was going to be painfully tight and dependent upon decidedly excellent timing.

[Rolth Wygraant]

Aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer Decimator, in high orbit of Toprawa

The Lambda class shuttle eased through the atmospheric shielding of the foredeck hangar bay, touching down among the assembled phalanx of stormtroopers and attending officers. The Captain rarely attended such landings in person unless it was a person of high station, or in this instance, a particularly notorious prisoner.

A practiced spread on Captain Wygraant's face at the sight of the man in shackles being led down the gangplank.

"Rebels are scum enough, but one of our own, a trusted officer to be implicated?"

He left his rhetorical statement hang in the air next to Colonel Mersh, the head of the Army garrison attached to his destroyer. Mersh shook her head, hands still clasped behind her back.

"It's a disgrace to us all."

"Indeed. One that won't be tolerated. We have our orders. We'll be departing within the hour to New Plympto, and will transfer Admiral Xilarius to the custody of the Moff. Normally I'd rather be done with this on the spot and have him executed, but the Admiral's station warrants something special. I'm told the Moff intends on making an example out of him."

Mersh nodded.

"As well he should. Traitors shouldn't be suffered."

"Yes, quite."

The disgraced Admiral, for his part, didn't bother acknowledging his captors, and stoically kept his eyes forward as he was lead from the hangar bay. The troopers would process him into the brig, and they would make their departure without delay.

[Wei Wu Wei]

"So he's on this ship, the Decimator. Going to New Plympto for trial."

Wei scratched his chin. "That's in the Core, which makes sense. But why not send him to Coruscant? Or does the Alliance also call it Imperial Centre?"

"We need to get on that ship, fast. We know where it's going. Do we know where it is coming from? I have a few ideas already for possible means to intercept the ship. If they take the major trade routes like the Corellian Trade Spine, the Corellian Run, or even the Hydian Way, we might have a harder time, but if they're trying to keep this Xilarius out of our hands by flying a lesser known course, we may be able to use that to our advantage as well."