A Piece of Common Sky

[Sanis Prent]

5681 Essetek Corridor Level 350, Port Town

Three days ago.

"Spast."

The thing about bespoke shoes is that when you wear them, you're mindful of where you step. It's not totally about the money, although ruining anything so lovingly custom-made costs upwards of a grand. The real pain is the involved process in getting another pair hand-made, and sitting through the fitting again. So you develop a sense of situational awareness that helps you to avoid things like urine on the sidewalk, a spot of filth you don't even want to identify by the bins, and...

...the special melange of blood and brains that comes from someone being deprived of both by a blaster slug to the head.

"That him?"

I didn't know the dead man, but he had been useful to me. A name in a book somewhere. A useful book. My bit of Trandoshan muscle approached the corpse, lifting up the man's half-ruined head by the hair to reveal the man's face, contorted in the unnatural expression of death.

"Rregh skrehgh ghaak."

So it was our guy. At least we got to ID him. The Empire might control Bespin with whatever iron fist they pleased, but the response time of an iron fist down in Port Town was slow. I lit a stim, offsetting the smell of fresh death as I looked up at a holocam. I pointed it out.

"Eye in the sky."

Gaalskar, the Trando enforcer, followed my gesture up, and nodded.

"Let's let the Empire clean up the roadkill. Pay someone off for the footage. Find the piece of shit who did this before they do."

[Emelie Shadowstar]

Three Days Ago

"They did what?" Emelie asked as calmly as she could, which wasn't very, and sadly volume control wasn't exactly her forte given her mood - as a few construction workers in The Elysium who glanced her way signaled out.

The bar was coming along nicely, but there were still a lot of decisions to make. Important cosmetic ones that took way too much brain power to decide upon. Not the time for an upset, that was for damn sure.

Glass of choholl in one hand and her other pressed to the earpiece that was relaying the bad news, she stepped away from the almost-bar and toward the nondescript door that would lead to somewhere a bit more private. As far as she knew, Atton wasn't planning on overseeing things today and the trouble makers were off on their ship celebrating one of their hunts they thought had gone great. Probably with beer and children's television shows. Idiots. Which left Nen in her ear yammering about the good news while he was upstairs in her office; probably looking at things he wasn't supposed to.

"Please, please tell me they weren't seen, at least?" A pause, an answer, an audible sigh and then a string of colourful curses slipped from the half-Zeltron. "What do you mean someone beat them to the footage? I thought Sid was some wonder kid with that sort of... I know, I know, don't kill the messenger. Look, I know you've already told Atton so get him on the line. We need to work out how to fix this and fast. I don't need the Black Sun up our asses before we even get out the door."

[Sanis Prent]

Today

The hot lather had already been applied, and the barber was beginning to strop his blade when my comm rang. Not the best timing. I sat up in the barber's chair, giving the Besalisk barber a staying wave of my hand as I switched the comm to holo setting. It was Gares Ken, one of the company slicers.

"Tell me you have a name."

Ken's bald head flickered in miniature. He'd been tasked with getting into the holo surveillance network, lifting the data I wanted, then purging the record. Hopefully, the purposeful omission left the Imperial investigators with less leads than we had.

"I've run facial biometrics on the shooter. There's no criminal record on Bespin or Greater Jovan to match."

That meant the shooter was either on the tidy side of things or a new fish. It didn't get me any closer to an answer.

"Tell me you didn't stop there."

Ken was already on that part. The sound of keystrokes off camera were hard at work.

"No, I ran a wider net. Picked up a match...pretty old. On Cularin."

"Never heard of it."

"Me either until today, but..."

A holographic image of another man's head took the place of Ken.

"...this is our man."

A small blurb of data on our mystery face appeared below.

"Vittore Montegue? So, what's the story?"

"Freelance hunter. Something of a special trophies and acquisitions kind of guy. Likes bagging freakshows."

"Like our dead rat." I gave a conciliatory shrug at that. The guy was an ugly bastard, but I could think of better reasons for people to end up dead.

"Looks like he's been working retainer duty. You're gonna love this part."

Another line of text came up. This time I fully sat up in my seat.

"Our little merry band of misfits."

The Exchange had been sort of floating in my peripheral vision for the past month. It was mostly harmless white collar crime. Slicing, numbers, that sort of thing. I'd been much more concerned about the arrival of the Hutts to pay them any attention, but that was before they'd done something stupid.

"Good work. Monitor our neck of the grid. If this is a move on our turf, these guys do their hitting on the HoloNet first. I'll sort them out."

[Vittore Montegue]

Three Days Ago

Vittore let out a deep groan of protest as consciousness came and clubbed him around the head. Everything ached, from his head on downwards: unfortunate side effect of drinking enough whiskey to pass out on the couch. How he'd managed to end up with one of his ankles hooked up over the back part he wasn't sure, but it was all pins and needles up in that leg, and maybe a little too much blood in other places than was probably appropriate for lying around in semi-public. He tried to reach up and grind the heel of a hand into his eye, hoping to drive away a little of the tiredness and dullness away, but because the gravity was all wonky from how he was lying, he wound up missing, accidentally slapping himself faintly in the side of the head instead.

"Sl-" was about all he managed to articulate before the Dune Sea that was his parched throat soaked up any hope of sound escaping. His mouth worked like a thirsty Mon Calamari, trying to muster up enough spit to swallow down and make some noise actually happen. "Sleazy!" he finally managed, his voice deeper and raspier than it was supposed to sound. He let a moment pass, with no immediate response. He yelled again, just in case the droid was waiting for more input. "Breakfast?"

Still no response. That, his tired and slightly hungover head concluded, was probably not good. Tentatively, Vittore tried opening an eye, but apparently some asshole had left the interior lighting on full. Vittore recoiled away on reflex, the motion enough to dislodge him from the sofa entirely, and deposit him unceremoniously on the floor. A stunned moment later, he tried to stagger back to his feet, and brush it off as intentional, but his still-asleep foot gave way beneath him, and deposited him back on his hands and knees again. From where he was now, he found him almost face to face with Sadie; or at least, face-to-back-of-head. She grumbled in protest at his continued noise-making; Vittore would probably have said something mean or teasing about it if she hadn't looked so damned cute right now, all curled up with her face pressed as deep into the sofa cushions as she could manage. As he clambered to his feet, he tried to offer a friendly and soothing pat against her shoulder, but fuzzy feet and blurry reflexes missed entirely, his hand winding up probably a little closer to Sadie's behind than it was okay for it to be. A mumbled groan escaped from him as he staggered away, probably intended to be some sort of apology.

It took a few minutes for Vittore to check all the cabins, trying to figure out where the damned protocol droid had got to. No Katie either. Weird. No Nen either, as Vittore discovered when he unceremoniously stumble-burst into the kid's cabin. Weirder. Vittore even went so far as to check the pots and pans waiting beside the kitchenette to be cleaned. Sleazy wasn't in there either. Not even his hat.

Finally he made his way to the cockpit, hand repeatedly rubbing against his face, trying to inspire some semblance of memory. He knew why he was tired, ish. Late job. Late return. Lot of celebrating. Missing children saved, the creepy bug-eyed bastard responsible put in the ground. The hero word might have been tossed around a bit. Bounty collected. Gratitude booze from the elated parents collected. All in all a good few day's work - not bad for a quick hop out to the edge of the Rim on a vapour-thin lead that had seemed like probably nothing. Sadie'd been pretty badass too. A lot more going on with that girl than a good set of keyboard and fretboard fingers. He caught himself smiling a little to himself. Stop that.

Prodding at the keys on Sleazy's usual console, Vittore pulled up the comm logs. Mostly junk from the Cloud City Board of Tourism, the kind of dren they sent over as a data packet every time you got landing clearance. Couple of boring-looking messages from Atton Kira and Emelie too, pretty routine sort of stuff to worry about later... but then one marked high priority. Subject line read "Explain", and nothing else. Vittore selected it with a frown, one that deepened as a vid file began to play. Security footage. Body getting dropped by some badass-looking guy. Nothing he hadn't seen a thousand times before. Kinda sloppy too this guy, not noticing the cam was there. Rookie mistake, not the kind of thing that he would -

His finger depressed one of the keys, freezing the vid in place. Sloppy rookie guy had damn near looked straight at the camera, and hell if it didn't feel like Vittore was staring in the mirror. He knew that face. Hated at that face every morning. Little cleaner shaven than he was right now maybe, eyes a little less tired and sunken, but there was no denying it: dude standing over the body was unquestionably him.

"Huh," was the only sound he managed to articulate for a whole few minutes, before his head managed to turn slightly back towards the door, aiming his voice over his shoulder into the room beyond.

"Sadie? Did we kill a guy last night?"

[Atton Kira]

Today

Another negative. Another dead end. Atton cursed under his breath, drumming at the keyboard to clear down the frustrating data results. His analysis of the security footage had come back empty - baring some freakish undetectable application of magic, the vid was genuine. No splices, no pixel shearing, no microsecond stutters, no nothing. This wasn't footage from somewhere else, superimposed on a Cloud City backdrop. This was Vittore Montegue, in that room, making a dead body out of one of Black Sun's boys.

Or at least, someone who looked like Vittore Montegue. His eyes strayed to two more of the bank of monitors - only a handful had been installed in Elysium's secret basement, the rest still in boxes surrounding him on all sides - watching the playback from different security monitors, time-synched with the stamp on the original recording. The murder played itself through; Atton's private landing bay stood ominously empty. No ship, no Crimson Tide or whatever bastard name Montegue had given it after he'd stolen her. Couple of hours rolled past before the ship even made it back into the bay from whatever gallivanting it had been off to. Couple more minutes and Sadie K'Vesh strode out, followed closely by Vittore Montegue who got himself in front of her, waving his arms around like a smashball goalie before managing to herd her inside. Atton had run the footage from other angles, lip-read the conversation. Some boring crap about there not being any food for sale in this part of Cloud City at this time of night that was worth eating; some emotional blackmail to get her to let him cook; utterly pointless, nothing relevant.

More swearing. Like Black Sun would believe that, no matter how true it ended up being. Bloody Montegues and Shadowstars, dragging all this unnatural crap onto his doorstep. Shadowstar with her shapeshifters trying to kill her; Montegue with his vendetta against seemingly anything that differed from a very narrow concept of normalcy. Between the two of them, it was a wonder there wasn't a whole bloody legion of shapeshifters and mindflayers and whatever else swarming Cloud City on a daily basis. Right old mess they'd made for themselves, and by extension for him. Because that was what happened. Crisis would happen, you'd wait a few minutes, and then there was Shadowstar's voice yelling down the phone at him.

He sighed a heavy sigh, pulling up the security feeds yet again, trying to get angles on the routes to or from the crime scene, some glimpse of a guy wearing the same clothes but a different face -

"Come on y' bastard thing," he growled, scowling at the screens. "Give me something."

[Emelie Shadowstar]

Today


It could have been worse. That was the only solace that Emelie had. It could have been worse. Granted, it was small comfort. So small that even a good spot of tovash couldn't even cut though the stress. Okay, so it turned out that the guilty parties weren't actually guilty. A few conversations after initial freak out had proven that there was no way in any of Corellia's nine hells that Vittore had killed the Black Sun's sorry sap; a fact that came as a relief and added a healthy dose of guilt in the mix for being so quick to judge. The hunter deserved better than that for everything he'd done for her, after all.

Still, finding out you were out of the frying pan didn't exactly put you out of harms way. Reasonable and damn good alibi or not - saving KIDS of all things - the truth was going to be hard to prove. Atton was on it as far as Emelie knew, but any damn moment she expected some armed thug to come barging into her office demanding to know why one of her people had gutted one of their people and for credits' sake she didn't have the bodies or resources to even begin trying to fight that sort of heat. Not that she didn't think the people she did have couldn't take out a good number. Hell, if she managed to convince Amaros to help the odds might even end up tilting towards their favor just a smidge but... no. Not a good way to keep your head down when some secret shadowy organization had it out for you. Emelie already had one group that wanted her dead, adding the Black Sun to that list was not in the cards.

The drawer of her desk was eyed, pretending she had x-ray vision to stare down the bit of ryll hiding there. It might almost be worth it to just lose herself until this all blew over. No No, Em. Clear heads until this is done.

The sudden flashing on her console tugged her attention away and she let out a heavy breath. "Ugh, what now?"

[Sanis Prent]

Emelie tapped the blinking incoming comm, bringing up a hologram of well-tailored Nar Shaddaan. Me.

"Miss Shadowstar? My name's Sanis Prent. I'm with the Company."

Company was polite jargon. The devil had a lot of names, so the parable went. I trusted the Exchange maven to guess the correct one.

"It's come to my attention that we had some merchandise that was damaged, and that you may know something about it. I'd like to talk about that."

[Emelie Shadowstar]

Well shit a brick and kriff me with it - Classy, Em. Real classy. At least she hadn't actually said it out loud. The urge had been swallowed with another gulp of the gruvian good stuff, more than enough time to collect her thoughts and break down what the guy said. Prent. With The Company. She'd have to remember that one for later when someone pissed her off and she wanted to have words with them. The Broker wants me to have a chat with you. Yeah, that could work. Not right now, though.

"Mister Prent," Frak sake, Em. The way she addressed him was sweet sounding, too familiar for someone who probably had already taken out a hit on your life. She should have been ashamed but all things considered, was it really any different than any other day lately? "I was wondering when I would be hearing from your organization."

Lips curved into a ghost of a smile as she bought a bit more time with another sip of her glass. She could have killed to have a smoke in the other hand right then.

"Yes, it does seem there's a bit of a... miscommunication going on that is effecting both our enterprises. Bit of a third party snafu, I'm afraid. Still trying to suss out the guilty party, you'll have to forgive me for not being more prepared."

[Sanis Prent]

She was being as polite and careful as she could. I knew how the Outer Rim Runaround danced, and used to dance it a lot when I was going system to system trying to hustle for freighter fuel.

"I understand. These things happen. The right hand not knowing what the left is doing, you know."

Giving a little shrug, I pressed on.

"Happens even within The Company, from time to time. You'd think we'd have it all together, right? Little breakdowns in communication between me and a few of my guys on the ground. I try to keep that from happening, but sometimes it does."

Always polite, always nonspecific. She knew what I meant.

"Figured I'd break the ice. Head off any more miscommunication. That's good for business, and we both win."

Turning just off holocam, I punched a few coordinates into a datapad, and transmitted.

"There's a Nar Shaddaan deli a few levels below you. Sudnario's. Let's do lunch. Me, my associates. You, your information spider - Kira."

I paused, as if there was something I was missing, and then amended.

"And Vittore Montegue. I'm sure he's busy, but you can tell him it's important."

As in, don't you dare cut and run or I will make certain a miscommunication definitely happens.

[Emelie Shadowstar]

"We'd all be delighted, I'm sure." Emelie replied, smooth an silk and actually managing to make a good show of it enough to the point where she almost was half convinced herself she was looking forward to this madness. Maybe some part of her actually was, watch the world burn and all of that.

She had assumed some sort of meeting would be required to patch things up and make as close as a resemblance to peace as possible, and Emelie had already been planning on counting Kira in. From what she understood he'd been under the ever watchful eye of the Black Sun before, or been one of their eyes, or eyes of an associate or whatever. Big things like that got complicated sometimes, as the current situation was proving. Either way Atton was more familiar with Cloud City and it's politics and personalities than she was. Whether her associate would actually attend the meeting or not, Emelie hadn't been certain, but it was always nice to have backup.

Apparently that backup was also going to include Vittore. That could get ugly fast, but the boy knew how to behave himself. - Boy. For the love of... Don't start that. The MAN knew how to handle himself. - It made sense that they'd want him there in person and as much as Emelie was loathe to admit it, she wanted him there too. If for nothing else Emelie was sure he could probably handle whatever associates that Prent brought along with him if things went real sour.

"Lunch it is, then."

[Sanis Prent]

Sudnarios was as close to acknowledging my roots as I got these days. Take away all the filth and the crime and the abject misery of Nar Shaddaa, and you could appreciate the good food they somehow managed to conjure out of the huttese melting pot moon. It also helped that we covered their protection racket account. This far down in Cloud City could be touch and go, but every hood within ten levels knew a place that Black Sun watched over. No one even dined and dashed. It was safe as houses.

We arrived fifteen minutes before. The owner, unsurprisingly named Sudnario, had already taken care of our discrete needs. The room in the back reserved for special occasions had places set, and he had taken care of the rest of the lunch crowd, getting the punters out the front door once their early lunch was done, and sliding a Closed sign over the door. Upon seeing my familiar face, he opened the door, letting me and my associates enter.

"Mike, keep your eyes open. I'm not expecting any trouble, but I don't want any punk bringing heat in here. It's a family establishment."

My second associate followed along, and I put a hand on Stevie's droid chassis.

"Record everything that's said, got it? I want this little get together on the record."

With all the arrangements made, we were escorted into the dining room to take our seats. Now, it was Shadowstar's move.

[Michael Cline]

"Understood, Mr. Prent. I'll let you know what I see."

Things had been touch and go between himself and his employer ever since the gangster had learned of Cline's unique skillset. There was a level of distrust there that didn't make the working environment conducive to friendly smalltalk. But Prent was smart, and Cline had to give him that. An asset was an asset, and Michael was nothing if not aware that was his lot in this organization. To Ms. Sasseeri, to Mr. Prent he was a tool, he was fine with that. The great thing about being a tool, is that you learn real quick how to apply leverage.

The youth kept a few steps behind Prent to one side as they were led to the back and seated. Once he was comfortable there was a moment where everything slowed down around him, a heart beat of control and connection, and Cline let himself get mad. He'd gotten very good at internalizing the anger that had made him such a hot-headed youth. So he let that fire burn inside, boil over until he could focus it outward, the darkside of the Force like a warm blanket to wrap himself in.

He hadn't needed to feel it empathically to know the tension that was already in the air. Though tapping in now and opening himself up to it so he could read any potential threats was almost choking him. When this was all said and done he'd have to see that Sudnario got a nice tip, the restaurant owner's tension felt like it was going to take years off his life at this rate.