It could be argued that the bar wasn’t a dive, but it definitely had some of the elements. Ayna wasn’t worried for her safety; certainly not with a trained soldier and a superhuman death-beast with her. But there was undeniable wear and tear to the interior, which the low lighting was perhaps meant to conceal, the patrons were among the more poorly dressed of the locals, and the main attraction was a circular centre stage. On it were two half-naked dancing girls, painted to look like Chanei. Having spent a lot of time around the real thing, Ayna easily spotted the lack of that strange, fluid perfection of movement.

Still, the place did offer a modest selection of light food and non-alcoholic drinks, and the music was quiet enough to speak to. And so they did. The place did draw a mix of locals and offworlders, making for a variety of options. It was a welcome delight to discover another Dwyyk.

“So, you folks want to know how to stay safe around here?” Kassuk asked.

He wore his hair unusually long for a kinsman born and raised on Dwyyk itself, and his hands were spotted with many little scars. Ayna would have loved to ask about those, and just chat about the homeworld, but they were on a mission.

“We do,” she said, and gave the other two a quick look. Neither had argued against this being her conversation to handle.

“Just hide behind that one,” Kassuk said, and gave Bers a grin. “You didn’t cut yourself in the kitchen, did you big man?”

“Cut man in kitchen, once,” the scarred, battered Fringer replied, though the action he mimed was in fact a stab, that seemed aimed at the gut.

“I believe you,” the Dwyyk man replied, before turning his attention back on Ayna. “How long do you think he’d last in the wilderness back home? Half an hour?”

“Maybe even more!” Ayna replied. “It would be fun to watch, certainly. From a safe hiding place, of course.”

“Of course. You know, I once had a chance to accompany offworld zoologists who wanted to penetrate the forest. I regret not taking the chance, because I heard it all got very colourful.”

“It usually does,” Ayna said. “You’d think they’d learn.”

They shared a smile; that weird smugness she’d come to realise her people possessed when it came to the deadliness of their world. No other breed of humanity could survive there; not without ravaging vast swaths of land with firebombs first, and then living in ashes.

“But, uh, seriously though…” Kossuk said with a sudden shift. “The dangers here are at night.”

“They usually are,” Herdis interjected, and Ayna gave her a soft nudge under the table.

“Ah, but it’s a bit different here,” Kossuk told them. “I’ve been working here as a metal cutter for five years, and almost every time something bad has gone down, it has been at night. It goes back to the old ways of the locals.”

He patted the spots under his eyes, where the locals had those tattoos.

“There never was much of a tradition of large-scale fighting here, apparently. I think there might even have been some sort of religious creed against it. Instead, serious disputes tended to be settled at night. Sneaky-style.”

“Perhaps our people should immigrate,” Ayna suggested. “We’d rule the planet in a decade.”

“We sure would,” the man replied, and they shared another moment of smug superiority. “But to continue working my way, however laboriously, to the point: That is the old way of doing things. And a mindset like this takes a while to change. But as you may have noticed…”

He indicated his own face, exactly as snow-white as Ayna’s.

“... Tsukima is becoming more connected. More multifaceted. At least in the cores themselves, and the local communities that do business with them. And the… bad sorts that end up here aren’t as hardcore about that old rule. Of course, as the lady said, if you're going to be bad, best to be bad out of sight.”

“Keep labouring,” Ayna said. “That point of yours is almost within reach.”

His face flashed irritation, but also enough of a smile that she knew she hadn’t overstepped.

“The point is that despite appearances, you actually are a lot safer around here than on many other worlds. During the day. If you go poking around at night, it might be a different story. Especially if you’ve managed to anger someone. Vendettas are a bit of a local hobby.”

“We’re not planning to stay long, and we have a docked ship to sleep in,” Ayna told him. “You know, in case we make someone angry,” she then thought to add.

“The towers have decent security,” Kossuk said with a nod. “You should be safe from anything petty. No one’s going to stumble out of a bar with a broken bottle and make their way up to your ship. Just remember that…”

He trailed off, and his eyes went distant for a moment. Ayna wanted to prod him again, but held back. Whatever he was about to say was serious business.

“Have you heard about Havan-Bas?” he asked.

“No,” Herdis said.

“It’s the nearest neighbouring city core. Or it was, rather. It’s been abandoned for a few years now. It was a small one, but then they always start out small. It never got its chance to grow, because it was hit by a series of disasters. Accidents, malfunctions, fires, strange deaths.”

“Sounds like sabotage,” Ayna pointed out.

“It’s sabotage when corps do it, terrorism when it’s an angry populace,” Kossuk said. “Isn’t that right? But no one was ever connected to it, so…”

He shrugged.

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“Eh, alright, I don’t really know where I’m going with all this. I like working here, I’ve gotten together with a woman, and the wilderness is nice and relaxing with just a bit of danger. But there is a nastiness hiding under the rug that is Tsukima. Corps garbage, port gangs, angry traditionalists… any of these might hurt you.”

“If you’re dumb,” Ayna said.

“Sure. If you’re dumb. Look, have you folks heard what you needed to hear? Because I have someone coming over, and we were going to spend the late afternoon together.”

“We’ve heard everything, I’d say,” Herdis said, and gave Bers and Ayna a look in search of confirmation. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Enjoy your stay. If you have the time and inclination, I recommend renting a ground car for a tour through the forests.”

They stood up from the table. The entire conversation had been in Gyvo, for Herdis and Bers’s benefit. But now Ayna got to finally use her mother tongue again.

“Walk softly,” she said to Kossuk, with a raised hand.

He raised his own fingers in parallel to hers.

“Walk safely.”

The three of them left the man to his drink, and found themselves an empty stretch of wall to stand by. Ayna’s eyes drifted to the gold-painted dancers again. During her original stay on the Addax, she’d never worked up the courage to ask Kiris what she thought of stuff like that. Now her chance had come again… and she still probably would not find the courage.

Herdis touched the little comm hidden in a pocket, to subtly activate her part of the ear-piece network.

“Gaylen, how are you two coming along?”

“Nothing major yet, but we have picked up some tidbits,” Gaylen replied.

“It’s the same here,” Herdis told him. “Tidbits and general advice.”

“Maybe if we add it all up some kind of picture will emerge,” he suggested. “Let’s meet under that overpass.”

He didn’t mention which one, specifically. Not on an unsecured channel. They’d discussed this beforehand. Sort of like professionals.

“We’re close to it,” Herdis said. “See you there.”

She ended the call, then took in the sardonic smirk on Ayna’s face.

“What? What is it?”

“Just… all this,” Ayna told her. “A lowlife spacer, a laid-back engineer, a runaway Chanei, a medic on vacation, that thing…” She pointed at Bers, “... and me. All of us playing secret agents, somehow. How did that happen?”

“Well, it started with an emergency beacon, and just sort of spiralled from there,” Herdis reminded her. “Life is a strange place, with strange chains.”

It sure was. Ayna still had some work to do to understand how she’d come to spend time with a magic swordswoman from the furthest reaches of space. But they all had more immediate issues to deal with, and so she focused forward.

They left the not-quite-dive, and she reflexively narrowed her eyes at the sight of daytime sky. But the gloom cast by the towering buildings gave enough cover for her to be relatively comfortable. She wondered if she and Kossuk were the only ones in the core who appreciated it. Then she, again, reminded herself to focus.

“Have either of you spotted those meatballs the boss-man talked about?” Ayna asked, as they walked along the canyons that were the streets of Baider-Bas

“No,” Bers replied, and Herdis shook her head.

“Maybe if everything goes well, and we don’t need to blast away in a hurry, we can all get together for a group meal. Try those things out, and see if they live up to the hype.”

“We could,” Herdis said, with restraint in her voice. “But let’s not get our hopes up just yet.”

They passed underneath walkways and bridges and overpasses, all of which played their part in the general gloom. Ayna, of course, saw perfectly, as long as she didn’t look straight up into the eye-searing slice of sky up above by the rooftop. Although they did some light chat, she did stay on alert, watching for eyes turned in their direction and people who were coming their way.

“You know…” she mused out loud. “Being on guard is such a natural part of growing up on Dwyyk… I mean, it’s like learning to walk… that when I first left home and started wandering, I was weirded out by people’s carelessness.”

“I think you’ve mentioned that before,” Herdis replied.

“Yeah… some things bear repeating,” Ayna told her.

“Wait, are you saying I’m being careless?” Herdis said.

Bers snorted a little.

“Comparatively,” Ayna said. “Because… yes, I see them again. Don’t look, but I think we’re being followed. Behind us. Three baseline men.”

“Easy,” Bers growled, and Ayna saw his fists clench. She’d seen the things that man could do. It probably would be easy, but they didn’t need his brand of mayhem right now.

“Keep calm, buddy,” Herdis told him, with just a bit of authority in her voice. “Let’s see if we can shake them.”

“We can pass through that store that’s around the corner,” Ayna suggested.

She took another look at a reflective surface, and caught the three men again. They had that mean-facedness she’d come to recognise since leaving home.

“We can dart in as soon as we break line of sight,” she added.

“Works for me,” Herdis replied. “Let’s do it.”

Bers made some barely-audible sound that was probably a grumble, but he didn’t turn around and charge with a battle cry. So that was something.

None of them turned around, or sped their steps up. Again, somewhat like professionals. Not until they were around that corner and Ayna whispered “Now”.

Not all of the skyscrapers had a ground-level entrance. But those that did were quite often set aside for local businesses. So it was that the three of them hustled inside a large, two-floor clothing store. Various materials were on display for touching and testing, physical mannequins were outnumbered by holographic setups that allowed one to make adjustments, and staff were on hand to handle the actual printing of brand-new custom-fitted clothes. Ayna would have been happy to spend some leisure time in the place, but as things stood they had to keep hustling.

There were stands and pillars and shelving units for them to go around. The flaw in the plan was the abundance of large, clear windows, for showing the store off to foot traffic, but they did their best to further break eye-contact. A couple of staff did approach them, and Ayna did her best to wave them off as fast as possible without being a complete jerk about it.

She decided she could risk a look behind, and disguised it as checking out a line of mannequins in ponchos. She didn’t see the shady trio, but then there was a lot of stuff in the way.

There was another entrance on the other side, and they stepped out into an even narrower street. Still, there was little traffic, and so they could jog along without hindrance. They went by a big, ugly, monstrous box of a building, shorter than the skyscrapers but a good deal wider, then cut around another corner.

The traffic was thinner still, which was why they’d selected that one overpass as their meeting place, and the three of them passed over a parking zone, along another narrow street, and then arrived at their destination. It did not offer total privacy, but then that had never been the goal. The point was just to have space to air sensitive topics without being overheard.

No one, it seemed, bothered to attempt a business right beneath the overpass, and from what Ayna could tell the nearby doors led only to crappy apartments, The fact that the two bottom floors had no windows certainly did not make the place seem enticing.

And so people passed by, but mostly only on their way somewhere else, and they seemed accustomed to ignoring strangers. And so the group took up position by one of the overpass pillars and waited.

They had not waited long before they got company. It was those three mean-faced men, and Ayna felt a bit sour over the wasted effort.