Borgollo the Hutt sat despondently in his new throne room. Attended by some of his older acquisitions and a new lavender skinned one, most Hutts would be happy. Plenty of subjects to taunt, a slice of Nar-Shaddaa itself and an influx of credits due to the in-demand nature of the scrapyards of the Industrial Sector. But his favorite haunt had just been taken from him by a competitor and he had received an ultimatum; an insane amount of protection money or his part of Nar-Shaddaa.
Borgollo had plenty of extra credits stashed away and even several starships he could use to get away, but this was a continuation of a worrying trend for him. Having only recently taken this spot after being forced out of Tatooine, by his own progenitor no less, the set up here had been pretty bare bones until he had gotten a shipment of new slaves from Ryloth. Some males to work in the heavy industry and scrapyards and a few dancers to work in his cantina. It would have been an excellent supplementary income, but he was stuck scrounging credits out of bank accounts a century old to maintain his lifestyle here. It was degrading.
Listlessly eating through a royal spread of food around him he only occasionally watched the newest dancer. He did not miss the worried glances to her supposed brother, the large cyan one he had acquired at the same time, as he moved a delivery of droid and machinery supplies further into his base. Perhaps soon, though his scheming mind was still preoccupied with navigating out of the morass he was in.
It would be expensive, but he had a couple old Haor Chall freighters that the members of the Trade Federation had retired centuries ago when Hoersch-Kessel had unveiled the Lucrehulk class of ships. Perhaps he could have the freighters retooled for smuggling. That would require getting the required spice and would leave him broke. Hutts were not kind to kin who lost their livelihood like this and if the shipment was busted when taking it to valuable markets like Corellia and Coruscant he would truly be ruined.
Starting over from nothing would necessitate swearing himself to one of the Kajitics that would take him. It was unconscionable. If he didn’t have an opportunity soon, he would have to make one, even if it could cause his ruination.
He dismissed his servants while grabbing another glass of Nerubian silk wine. He needed to plan and didn’t want others privy to his schemes. Powering on the expensive holo computer in the dais the multiple screens and infographics came into being around him. It was time to work, he needed to account for every minutia before he was willing to commit one way or another.
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I ignored the chuckling behind me as I confirmed the hyperspace jump in the ship’s system, having forgotten that the droid had no control over this, and watched as the stars ahead of me turned into streaks of light as we went super-liminal before they were replaced with a blue glowing corridor. I was tempted to continue to watch but averted my eyes just in case. Luckily this galaxy did not have to contend with the same issues as in the immeterium even if it held superficial similarities. But I would stay up here and watch just in case.
The others didn’t understand my paranoia nor, to my regret, comprehend why I thought we needed a gellar field generator to do this safely. Just assuring me that the hyperdrive engine would take care of everything as long as the math was done correctly. The urge to take it apart to understand the design was there but so was the sweat from the existential horror of jumping to lightspeed through something called hyperspace. None of them understood the physics behind it but still had the gall to assure me of the safety of thing.
The other two had left while I mumbled a prayer to the Omnissiah for safe passage. I decided it was time to do some of the work I’ve been practicing for over the past week. Reprogramming a droid. As I patched into the R1 unit to bring up the diagnostic tool in my vision it began to send alerts which I caught and erased before they could be set for transmittal when we got within range of one of the Galactic Network transceivers. The R1 hadn’t said as much but it was clearly set to let the Black Sun handlers of the pirates know if it was being edited.
As I dove in the R1 kept it up, abiding by its current programming in a way to show me what sections of the program necessitated the alerts to be sent. It was a type of behavioral matrix with extensive libraries to define what the droid did. It was an interesting mix of a particular format of galactic basic and binary, which seemed to be set up so that someone ignorant of the intricacies of binary could still have some easy of control over the droids specific programming. This would typically be done with a data slate, limiting one’s overall view of the programming to single sections. I had the entirety of it visible to me through my AR interface, pieces of the architecture lighting up to be in real time as the droid abided by sections.
As I read through it, not a quick process, I com’ed Bedan for a refill on my caf. It was such a relief knowing I could rely on the others aboard the ship as a servitor might be able to manage coffee, but they had not been designed to manipulate such things.
Bringing different sections into my awareness I mapped out the tree that stipulated who to contact if the R1 was being manipulated. This was trivial but the next step was much more difficult. I had to find whatever secrets had been emplaced by whoever had done the programming. It was definitely not an amateur but someone more on the level of a true datasmith. The initial aspect had had sections in both basic and binary, and now I was combing through the libraries while I played various virtual audio files for the droid. Many of them disparaging or planning betrayal of the Black Sun. Several of these got hits as I discovered the droid was essentially a surveillance unit. The pirates may have been wise to relegate it to a single job. I even began to find evidence of duplicity in the libraries. One term could lead me down more than one line of inquiry that would relate to more, highly specific, alerts sent to the handler. One alert nearly got away from me when a second, hidden, comlink in the chassis started drawing power to send a signal without utilizing the primary one. I wonder if this was standard with associated pirate groups or if whoever had sponsored this group with the ship had been particularly paranoid.
After I had sorted through what I found I deleted what I could and replaced myself with the target to communicate to in some events. I might not have found everything as whoever had done this was far more experienced with this galaxy’s techniques than I but a certainty I had was that the droid would only use the communication suite on the ship if I expressly allowed it for whatever task needed doing. Once I was done, I allowed it to cycle its power to apply the update. A few minutes later it was back with me and expressing gratitude. It seemed it disliked being under a literal yoke and preferred to do a job with fewer fetters. I could understand that, but I was more concerned with my technical skills. If I continued to work mostly on the xeno-tech of this galaxy I would probably pick up new habits when it came to programming in general. That worried me. I wish I had kept some of the other projects to keep me company, though I did have the servo skull to complete. It would be the work of days and we were more than halfway through this first jump.
I spent the rest of the time working on the technically demanding gravitic impeller that I would implant into Gravis’s skull before returning to the cockpit. The exit of hyperspace was as fascinating as the entrance. The solid blue-white corridor gave way to shortening lines of light as the stars came into view again.
That’s when I noticed a message left the ship. The changing of scenery had distracted me long enough for something to leave. I queried R1 and it didn’t know. But it told me to check the comm buffer. Something I hadn’t known existed until just now. Cursing I found what it showed me. A temporary file installed after I murdered all the pirates had been hidden in here under encryptions. R1 professed no knowledge, and I made a note of it. I would need to look for more hidden ways this could have been facilitated. Perhaps much like the spare comm device it had a spare core that only activated under duress. I felt a lot less safe now that I knew I didn’t have complete control over the systems around me. I made sure to clear the buffer and looked for any other ways something could surprise me like this again.
I found two open ports on the ship where it’s security systems wouldn’t apply. I made sure to close them before turning my attention to the rest of the system. Fornos was the second planet nearest the sun, and we were at the Mandeville point to solar northwest. I plotted a heading to the next point for the Pabol Sleheyron hyperspace lane. It would take us just over 14 hours to clear the system. I contacted the others to set a constant watch in the cockpit. After I left to rest, we would need someone to verify we weren’t about to be attacked by the shadier elements that frequented the system. Unlikely due to the ships more extensive than normal firepower but I needed to be more careful. The Black Suns might now know the fate of this ship’s crew and I would need to make sure it was unidentifiable once we left Nar Shaddaa.
Coasting through the system was easy. It was sparsely populated with a bunch of ships that were all minding their own business and either dropping in on Formos or mostly going through the system as we were. As this wasn’t a primary hyperlane there was only a couple dozen ships around, mostly near Formos. It was peaceful but I was working on what I suspected was a ghost protocol that the droid would be induced to send a message and then forget it when under duress. I did fine one of them when destruction was imminent, but all it seemed to do is open the door to more of them.
Whoever had done this was not only adept at the droid programming architecture than I was they were also pretty devious. Had they had reason to suspect this group of pirates or was this standard when it came to financing them? I wasn’t sure.
Once I was done removing that section of programming, I left the cockpit to get some rest. After it had been cleaned the pirate captain’s quarters were luxuriantly comfortable to me. A soft yet firm foam mattress I hadn’t gotten around to studying melded around my body, even the mechandrites which meant I could actually rest on my back without straining my spine, even if it was mostly inorganic.
While I rested, I fiddled with the cred sticks I had brought with. Having loaded up five more of the things to the max of ten thousand and putting them into the case with the others I had the last 2320 credits into another stick that I would keep on me as I would need to pay for fuel and docking once we arrived.
We got through the system with no interruption. We skirted around so any system authority had no reason to challenge or scan us. It did much to alleviate my nerves, but we were barely even in the republic. One thing I did do, and subsequently learn cost me money, was use the local connection to the hypernet to download information on ships that frequented the space lanes around me for the last half millennia and a treatise on interaction with Hutts. I was only able to find some from the prospective of Jedi before my hour of connection was up and I refused to pay again as I had no idea how much money was present in the bank account that this was set up on. Also, the navigator’s guild of this universe charged for updated hyperspace coordinates for each jump. It was a charge of 50 credits every time you updated your route, and most computers could only hold a dozen or so sets of calculations. That was including the few that the dedicated astromech droid had as well.
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Acquiring this knowledge, while incredibly important for my future, was a setback. I would need a constant flow of credits to even maintain accurate maps of this small space around the system I was in as the only free set was from the system to Fornos. Technically the pirates usually had to rely on outdated charts each semi-annual jump to the unnamed system. Which was nominally dangerous but that was mitigated by how far out this was from the more chaotic core, which required updates much more regularly to maintain safe hyper lanes.
I set thoughts of this nature aside as I went through the shipping history of the outer rim. It even had a section for notable pirates. There was even a stellar endorsement under the few centuries old history of the Gozanti Cruiser which I found myself in.
“Though the ship has been used by many independent organizations, including the Hutts, it has never been used in a direct act of piracy.”
By the fucking Machine God that quote was nearly two centuries old by the then head of Gallofree Yards. To have a blatantly false advertisement for this line of ship there might only be propaganda present in here. I would have to fall back onto tried-and-true wisdom of the forge lords from back home, and not trust any ship I see because it doesn’t matter how loyal it was to Forge Stygies VIII. The Inquisitors’ goons could still be aboard.
Not that I would disparage the Inquisitors of Terra, the auditors of Holy Mars could be just as cutthroat, they were just the second most likely in the Segmentum Pacifica to attempt to curtail the Tech Heresy of the Xenarites. The first being their own experiments.
As the coordinates were updated the R1 gave the go-ahead that was ready.
++ By the grace of the Machine God, the coordinates are set. ++
Perhaps I had added a few lines of holy observation to the xenos machine. That made it less heretekal right?
The trip through the Pabol Sleheyron was uneventful as befitted a well charted hyperspace lane. I busied myself in the construction of the only holy equipment of the Machine God I could manage and lost myself in the construction of a servo skull. It would never be the equal of some of the master crafted ones that still had complete souls of those who’ve been selected to continue their work for the machine god, but I was able to harness enough of Gravis’s when I preserved the body that this one would have a predilection to the operation and maintenance of engines. I made sure to include necessary maintenance for the crow as well. The skull and R1 would be able to communicate even with the comlink I installed. It was very atypical for one to do such, but I would be interacting with the xeno of this galaxy a lot in the coming weeks. I would need something that would not only be useful in the setting but would also strike fear into my enemies. Very few things could do such to the heart of xeno like a servo skull.
I was only part way through making sure all of the implants in the skull tested fine and adding servitor replacement augmetics eyes in the place of Gravis’s empty sockets. Gravis’s eye implants were preserved for future use. The servitor ones were bulky and would help disguise the skull as nothing more than a macabre droid. The impeller itself was ready for testing.
I made myself present in the cockpit after I had granted Joran his request to pilot the ship to the next hyperspace lane. And I was glad I had come up for this, I finally got to see what a busy system looked like. The Crow was tracking thousands of ships in the few million km around us. Most heading to and from the planet. Many were moving to the Mandeville points in the north and south of the system too. Sleheyron was mentioned in the primer on Hutts as a place to only go if necessary. It was heavily industrialized by the Hutts, and the primary exports was commercial goods and slaves. There were several stations around it and if I zoomed the view in, I could see a planet that looked more like a hive world than what I was expecting. I didn’t have enough resolution to see more than the lights and outlines of the city, or cities, around the planet.
“Is Nar Shaddaa similarly inhabited?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s even denser. They call it little Coruscant for a reason.”
“I don’t have reference.”
“Oh, sorry.” Joran thought for a moment. “So Coruscant is so old and heavily populated that the planetary city has layers. Going down hundreds of miles. No one is really sure how many people live on that planet because of it. Nar Shaddaa is similar. It’s just a moon but there are tens if not hundreds of billions of people on it. It’s the beating heart of Hutt space. The only section I’ve been to is the Industrial Sector. It’s the best place to look for a new transponder for the Crow.”
I decided to access the holonet in system. I needed to get through the other two information packets I had downloaded but I needed another. I was getting better at surfing for information. It really awed me at the possibilities of having information so close at the hands of the Mechanicus. Trade of truly valuable plans and STC’s almost never happened except when a new forge was being founded and that was typically done by allowing the bare minimum to be copied. It was all to prevent the Great Enemy from getting more imperial tech.
I personally sided with the Xenarites on this. We knew at Stygies VIII that the not so metaphorical Titan was out of the hangar. Expansion wasn’t a priority, and the Mechanicum could barely retake forges lost to orks. Not to mention the Great Enemy. The Dark Forges has all and more of the most precious STC’s. We needed expansion and innovation; my mentor was the one to open my eyes to thing. The problem was doing so without straying out of the light of the Omnissiah. Though I was far beyond that as I sat next to some xeno tech droid a galaxy away from everything.
The information I found for scrapyards and dry-docks for ships on Nar Shaddaa was extensive. I even found a forum where people were debating who even controlled certain parts of the Sector with odds being placed on certain groups or Hutt’s maintaining control on certain parts. There were odds on someone named Borgollo holding against a concerted push by more than one syndicate. The Hutt was new to the game on Nar Shaddaa and wasn’t given good odds, but he still controlled a few ship refitters which were considered high value. The nature of the competition on the moon was fascinating. And I was struck by an idea. Patronizing one of Borgollo’s yards and utilizing him to broker a lucrative deal involving the semi-precious banking clan metals might indebt him to me.
Perhaps, the Admec was always looking for ways to indenture Rogue Traders with similar schemes to profit from the worlds being exploited outside the Imperium. I had been studying for a position such as this at one point. It was the defining choice behind taking fewer and less obvious augmetics so as to be more personable to the usually discriminatory practices of many Rogue Traders. They were typically very inclined to retain their flesh’s youthful looks and an Explorator who was able to evoke comradery in such a way was rare. I would need to think about how workable putting the Hutt into debt with me could be. If they were as conniving as Rogue Traders tended, it would possibly be the most challenging single task I had outside of starting a Forge World. Though arguably that was not a single task.
The Passage through Sleheyron was slower than Formos. We had less of a distance real-space to fly but with the busy throughput of this hyperspace lane we waited in line for almost 6 hours until the Hutt control platform got us our coordinates. For 65 credits. They were clearly skimming off the top from the navigator’s guild.
I suppose it didn’t matter. I had heard that the Hutts flew to their own tune more than once so I figured the petty corruption would continue.
By the end of the route to the Y’trob system I had a new companion floating over my shoulder. Only the front of its skull was visible and impregnating the bone with machine oil gave it an unnatural luster. It would not be mistaken for what it truly was as I had gone through pains to utilize the Mechanicum’s techniques to disguise it as a droid. This might be a boon for it as not only was it more well armored than most servo skulls even with the low-quality servitor implants it had much more memory available than most servo skulls. Any manipulation mechandrites or offensive weaponry would have to wait until I could do the programming. One thing that was sticking out to me was that the proper process of the Admec for the Rites of Awakening the Machine were many times longer and more complicated than the behavioral tree that was used for a droid’s behavior. I shouldn’t be but I was tempted to utilize some of their xeno programming methods to expedite the process. I shouldn’t be but with so much to do saving a few days’ worth of work was incredibly tempting.
Arriving in the system I was struck again with the incredible amount of traffic that passed through the system. Some of the planets seemed mostly ignored but there was a gas giant planetary system that seemed almost as busy as the Nal Hutta system. Nal Hutta was a polluted mudball of a planet whose ecosystem had been terraformed both for the comfort of the Hutt species but also to strip mine sections of the planet.
Nar Shaddaa was a terrestrial moon of the planet that initially had processed the material but as the Hutts mini empire expanded so did the responsibilities of the moon. Not only was it the most famous gambling establishment in the galaxy it heralded a wealth of opportunity for any ambitious enough for it. Control of the various sectors shifting year by year, only massive galaxy spanning corporations like Corellian Engineering maintaining a stable foothold on the planet. I spent the rest of the day while we approached the moon to weigh my options. There was a single banking clan establishment in the Corellian sector. I had the opportunity to return their stamped metals there or I could try and get in with a Hutt who may be on their last legs when it came to control of their piece of the Industrial sector. Both held many unknowns to me and either way I probably had Black Sun pirates tracking my movements.
I had risked another payment to look up dealings with the Banking clan to try and get enough material to come to a decision. Hutts could be trusted to always be driven by greed, ambition, and cruelty. The Banking clan was just as ferocious in its own way. Almost as independent from the Republic as the Hutts as they were based as well in the Outer Rim of the galaxy. They even had their own armed militant wing made to enforce, or even broker at the end of a blaster, their loans and debtors. I would need to decide before landing.
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Rohr Fall, the head of the IGBC liaison of Nar Shaddaa, sighed as he set down the latest projections. Fighting tooth and nail with the Hutts in their own territory had been taxing, but he was here so he might as well bare it while his posting prospered. Partly due to their good relationship with the Corellians, but mostly due to the trillions of credits that moved through Nar Shaddaa.
It was why this posting was technically a promotion. His commendation had been for “Unflinching honor and judgment in the face of reprisal.” He had been pushed out of republic space faster than a Hutt sucked down a mud worm due to exposing a republic diplomats racketeering and bribery. The republic diplomat was still operating on Muunalist though, so the scandal had been taken care of before it hit the media on Coruscant. He had always thought the Republic had ideals that enough of it lived up to, but he had been betrayed by the very institution he had worked for. A simple accountant for one of the IGBC’s offices for the Republic’s immense commercial needs he had been perfectly positioned to trace the billions of credits the man had laundered but all he got for it was being pushed, at the demand of the republic’s representative, to the most dangerous position the Banking Clan maintained. The posting of head-accountant on Nar Shaddaa. Only available because of a two-millennium old treaty that had been signed in order to keep the Hutt Kajitics and the IGBC from going to war as tensions around the galaxy were leading to bloody war between the Jedi, Sith and countless other groups.
His musings were interrupted when his personal droid brought him some refreshment and, unexpectedly, some news. There was a freighter captain requesting a face-to-face meeting with a representative of the bank. Concerning matters he simply claimed were important. While the captain had said he wouldn’t give information over potentially surveilled lines of communication he had read a string of numbers.
Rohr immediately recognized the code when the droid revealed what had been relayed. Every Banking clan ingot of any metal was pressed with its symbol. There was a polymer coating that had micro scale repeating digits that worked as the unique identification. One would need a specific reader developed by the banking clan or a frankly illegal after-market reader. He assumed the Hutts might have knowledge of this, but they wouldn’t bait him into a meeting where he’d have the Banking Clan battle droids and a plethora of scanners ready to identify every hair of who they were meeting with.
Might as well sate his curiosity, there wasn’t much else going on for him around here.