The next day...(Corias)

[Minion Alghieri]

The mongrel stood slouched against the exterior wall of the B&G, toying with a credit chit. As arranged, Corias Bonaventure should be stopping by soon enough, to complete the transaction an admittedly inebriated Alghieri had initiated the other day. Not that he regretted it; overall, a fair exchange.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias Bonaventure was in good cheer today. Last night had been just the sort of respite he needed--a couple drinks, a couple clubs, and a girl's comm. number. And on top of that, he'd sold a planet.

The air taxi held him up a few minutes--the meter had run unaccountably high for the ten-minute jaunt between the Ben Zedi spaceport and the Jedi Temple District. The Rodian behind the wheel didn't understand much Basic, and he pretended not to understand Corias's protests in Rodian. After a bit of finagling, niggling, and nagging, the driver finally knocked two credits off the price. For the sake of his appointment, Corias was willing to compromise.

He was still in a relatively good mood as he strolled briskly to Yog's. The air was unseasonably warm, so he'd dispensed with his flight jacket and was wearing a red, oriental-print shirt and a pair of rough-looking khakis. His Rummel P-16S dangled at his hip in its snap holster--he always wore a firearm when he was going to be carrying cash--and the data crystal with the survey info on planet CG-621 was safely stowed in a utility pouch on the opposite side of his belt.

It didn't take long to spot Alghieri; he wasn't exactly the type that blended in.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Alghieri," he said amicably. "How's the universe treating you?"

[Minion Alghieri]

"Just fine, Monsieur Bonaventure," Minion replied, pushing away from the wall to greet Corias with a handshake. "After all, I've got myself a planet, or very shortly will."

The chit flipped and caught itself between a pair of talons, flicking out through the air towards the shipper. "As agreed. It's all in order; in fact..." He proffered a datapad, showing the last few seconds of a credit verification check in progress, and culminating an in agreeable beep.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias snagged the chit out of the air, fumbled, and snatched it on the second try. He turned it over in his hand, then peered down at the datapad Alghieri held. He took the pad, punched a few keys, nodded in satisfaction, and handed it back to the mongrel.

"Looks good to me. Naturally, I'll run my own check on the credit chit, but..."

He unzipped the pouch on the left side of his belt and pulled out a small, plexi jewelcase. A fingertip-sized crystal with a datalink cap on the base lay inside.

"You're planet's right here. All my survey information on See-Gee-Six-Twenty-One, categorized and prioritized."

He handed the crystal off, then dug another item out of his pouch--a chip that would fit snugly between the crystal and a data uplink.

"This is the encryption key for the crystal. The key itself is password-protected, and once I've verified that your credit is good--a matter of which I have no doubt--I'll transmit the password."

[Minion Alghieri]

Alghieri raised an eyebrow, laughed, shook his head. Dreadlocked braids sprayed out like a fountain - albeit one whose water appeared hardly more pure than the Toilet Duck he'd swallowed last night. He plugged the crystal into his datapad via the encrypt and looked over the module's programming. Seamless.

"No head for chances, Monsieur?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias chuckled. He took out a pocket-sized device and began scanning the credit chit. "Taking chances is business as usual for a spacer. I take chances all the time. Just not where money's concerned. I'm sure you understand that... being in the shipping business, after all. I mean, buying a planet that's so far removed from the rest of civilization... that's taking a chance in itself, isn't it?"

[Minion Alghieri]

A flicker of an old hardness passed over Alghieri's eyes. "Let me be blunt, M'sieur. I am not wholly a shipper. In point of fact, on any given day I run between a seventh and an eighth of all illegit commerce in the Varunda system. Naturally, I must protect my interests...and things are in motion which shall make having an off-the-beaten-path facility very advantageous. The amount of credits I've just given you is, if anything, an underestimation of that planet's value to me."

[Corias Bonaventure]

The spacer pricked his ears--his eyes roved back and forth between Alghieri and the datapad, but he was listening intently. His ribs itched just above his blaster holster, but he resisted scratching them.

"Really? Wow. That's... quite the racket."

The pad bleeped affirmatively, shaking off the momentary bout of scruples. "But your money's on the up-and-up, and that's my main concern. It's not really my business what you do with your business. After all, nobody's perfect."

Corias pocketed the credit chit, and there was a moment of terse silence. "Oh, right." The spacer lifted the datapad and keyed in a quick command. A flood of characters leapt onto Alghieri's handheld, filling in the "password" slot on the encryption interface.

"It's all yours. So, Varunda. That's a busy system. You must have a lot of connections to operate on that kind of scale, even with the, uh, ostensibly legit commerce."