Ravensdagger_Overkill

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty Taylor still had plans for Anoat. Taking apart the financial side of the industry supported by slaves was not going to be enough to improve everything. That would require time, time that the people below would spend in miserable conditions.She couldn’t imagine the people responsible for the slaves caring all that much when the company paying them folded and their paycheques bounced.In a way things were about to get a lot worse, and it was entirely her fault.She felt... very little guilt about it.She knew she was causing some great suffering, but it was like lancing a boil. Suffering now in order to bring relief later.Taylor and her crew gathered in the Atlas. Skarsk Nek, Qarrry, Xarly, HK-47, and the newest member, R3-C2. The mess was just large enough that Taylor could sit on the kitchen counter and the more organic members of the crew could be outside of her range if they sat on the far end of the dining table.“HK, want to translate, please?”“Acquiescence: Certainly, mistress. I will translate so that the meaning of what you say is properly conveyed to these wasteful meatbags.”“No funny translations,” Taylor warned. “Save that for non-mission-critical stuff.”The droid nodded his head. “Statement: I would never jeopardize an amusing mission for such petty fun.”“Cute,” Taylor said.Her crew had spent the day after the attack on the CEO resting in the Atlas. Every droid onboard the ship was ready to deploy, and every gun was a moment away from blasting anything that entered their docking pad, but nothing had shown up.That meant that either they were facing an enemy that was actually clever and was waiting to ambush them, or the system’s security force hadn’t figured out who had attacked the Czerka headquarters.She was hoping it was one, and banking on it being the other.“So what do you want to talk about, boss?” Xarly asked.“Anoat,” Taylor said once HK-47 finished dutifully translating. She had understood most of that sentence. It probably helped that Basic wasn’t all that complicated a language to learn. Clearly, someone had put some thought into creating it. “We need to decide what to do while we’re here. Tattletail uncovered a lot of important data, but we only have a limited time to act on it. We also need to decide on a course of action that won’t negatively impact the slave population of the world.”“We’re going to free them, right?” Qarry asked.Taylor nodded. “I hope we’ll be able to. That’s the reason we’re here. But... I think if we act too quickly, we might make things worse for them.” There was something... a niggling at the back of her mind that told her she wasn’t needed here yet. An instinct, maybe?“Worse than being a slave?” Xarly asked.The trandoshan hissed. “Things can always be worse.”A beeping sounded out across the room.Taylor glanced up at HK-47 and spoke in English. “I want you to check the room for listening devices. That kind of timing seems purposeful.”“Explanation: That is the ship’s communication’s system warning you about an incoming transmission. R3-C2 should be able to play it without having us relocate to the bridge.”“Who’s it from?” Taylor asked R3-C2.The astromech warbled and shifted, then a few panels slid open on its chassis and a blue projection leapt up before it.Taylor didn’t recognize the person. She was a young woman, lithe and fit. Taylor couldn’t tell if she was human or not, but if she wasn’t, then she wasn’t far from it. The woman glanced around and then locked eyes with Taylor. She said something. The tone suggested it wasn’t a compliment.Taylor glanced at HK-47. “Translation: I thought you would be taller.”Taylor chuckled. “That’s a new one. How did you get this, ah, number?”The woman started to pace, her foot-tall hologram moving left and right. It reminded Taylor of a cat on the prowl. “Dooku gave me your contact information. He has a mission for you.”“You don’t sound happy about it,” Taylor said.“Dooku has said that there’s a troop of Jedi heading to Anoat. They want to interrogate you. I would love to see that. But he doesn’t want his precious new toy lost to a few upstart Jedi.”Taylor leaned back against a wall, her arms crossing. “Jedi, huh?” She could feel the saber pressing into her side. One of their weapons. “I don’t know if I want to deal with them either. But I can’t just leave the system. There’s a lot more work to do here.”Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!The woman grimaced. “Dooku has decided that Anoat will become a... symbol. I don’t pretend to care about his political games, but it’s a place where the Republic has failed, and he wants to make his side look good by rubbing their faces in that failure.”Taylor nodded slowly. “Which means that we can expect his faction to help. Or at least try to look like they’re helping.”“Oh, he’ll actually do it. Dooku doesn’t take half-measures,” the woman said. “You have a new mission now.”“I don’t answer to Dooku,” Taylor said. “Nor, for that matter, do I answer to you.”HK-47 turned to her before the woman could say anything more. “Observation: She has a pair of lightsabers. She is likely either a Jedi, or a Sith. The latter is more likely if she’s allied with Dooku.”“Does that make her more trust-worthy?” Taylor asked.“Statement: Quite the opposite.”The woman glanced between Taylor and HK-47, then scowled. “I’m just the messenger. If you want to fail Dooku, then I will be glad to relay that back to him.”“What’s the mission?” Taylor asked.The woman grimaced. “Antar Four. It’s some backwater near the Inner Rim. Not too far from the Galactic Core. The people there are starting to break from the chains of the Republic, but the Republic isn’t pleased about it. Dooku wants us to... assist the locals to find their freedom.”“It sounds like you’re leaving out a lot,” Taylor said.“Of course I am. Antar Four’s problems have been brewing for a long time. I’m not here to hold your hand through all of this.”“Then what are you here for? What’s the actual mission?” Taylor asked.The woman crossed her own arms. “Dooku wants us to help. He was rather open about how.”“Us?” Taylor asked.She glared. “Yes. Us. He said that perhaps I could learn from you. I doubt it, though.”Taylor weighed her options. She had some ideas on how to help the people of Anoat, but they were all complex, the sorts of things that would take weeks or months to even begin to implement. If Dooku was planning on turning the world into a massive PR stunt, then that would mean saving all the people here while smiling for the cameras. It was probably more than she could do at the moment.“What’s the actual issue on Antar Four?” Taylor asked.“I explained it to you already,” the woman said, her voice turning into a growl.Taylor sighed and let her arms drop. “Fine. I guess I’ll figure it out on my own. Did you have a place where you wanted to meet?”“Prindaar system. Antar Five,” the woman said.“Close to our objective, then,” Taylor said.“Antar Five has nothing but a few mines and industrial sectors. It’s barely worthy of note. Come in looking like a freighter from the Trade Federation and no one will bother you. You can figure that much out, can’t you?”“I’ll manage,” Taylor said. “See you soon.”“Yes, I suppose you will,” she said.Taylor had the distinct impression that this woman was going to try to kill her. She didn’t like working with villains, which begged the question, why was Dooku working with her. Was he? She made a note to ask him before they left to fly into a possible trap.The woman reached for something to the side.“Wait,” Taylor said.“What?”“You never gave me your name.”She scoffed. “You never gave me yours.”Taylor smiled, though she wasn’t entirely amused. It was more of a show of teeth. “Darth Khepri.”The woman hesitated. “Asajj Ventress,” she said a moment before her hologram disappeared.“She seems nice,” Xarly said.“Observation: She seems to be the sort of Sith who is ruled by the dark side,” HK-47 said.“What’s that mean?”The droid turned her way. “It means that, unlike you, the dark side controls her. She does not control it. It makes her dangerous.”“To us, or to herself?”“Affirmation: Yes.”Taylor chuckled. “Right. Tattletail, get me what information you can about this Antar Four place, and can you send a message to Dooku? Ask him if he actually works with this Asajj woman.”Taylor felt as if things were starting to get exciting again.

* * *

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One The quiet of hyperspace travel was at once strange and comforting.Taylor sat in the Atlas’ captain’s seat. The bridge-if the term could even be used-wasn’t all that impressive. A few stations, currently occupied by droids, and a larger seat in the centre that afforded her a nice view of the swirling starscape past the viewport.She was alone, only the occasional hum of servos from her droids or the beep of a machine filling the silence. It was nice.She had her insects inspect the rest of the Atlas while she leaned back into the captain’s chair. Skarsk Nek was fiddling with the handle of a knife in the workshop at the rear. The ttwo Falleen members of her crew were sleeping in their respective bunks. HK-47 and Tattletale were playing a game similar to chess with little holographic characters in the mess hall.All was well. At least for now.Taylor was currently studying.Antar Four. The world was a nice enough place from the looks of it. The native inhabitants, the Gotal, seemed like hardy people. A bit shorter on average than humans, with large horns on their heads and rough fur on their bodies. They had a strange sensitivity to electronics that Taylor had made note of before moving on.As interesting as the planet and the people on it were, she wasn’t studying them for their culture and history.Well, there was some study in that direction. After all, a lot of issues could be traced back to a source. Sometimes that meant a cultural aversion to something, or a new way of seeing things, or maybe just a historic grudge.Mostly, she was looking for the root of the current issue with the Separatists on the planet.A group of Gotal had been labelled as terrorists, and Taylor couldn’t entirely disagree with the label. They had bombed a building, killing a few people in the act and injuring more. Some of those had been civilians. It wasn’t a good look.Every news report-translated through HK-47’s software-painted them as out of control rebels though.In her experience as a villain, people didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to bomb a building. There had to be a root cause, a reason for people to take up arms.She stopped reading news reports and started skimming them. For the most part, the repeated the same message over and over, with slightly different wording and perhaps a different angle to things.The interviews on the scene caught her attention though. Most were holorecordings of politicians decrying the bombing as a terrible crime and calling for assistance to put down the rebels and... and she’d heard it all before.The interviews with civilians on the scene were a little more interesting.“It’s a shame that it came to this,” a young gotal man said. He was shaking his head in a very human-like way. “I’m not one of those Separatists, but I agree that the Republic could be handling things better.”Taylor paused after letting that video end. Something niggled at her. The Republic could handle something better. That sounded a lot like a cause.She went back over the news reports. There were a lot of fingers pointed at the gotal terrorists, but no one spoke of a reason for their attack, a cause.Taylor followed her hunch and started to look further back. An organization like that would take some time to form. They’d need a cause to rally around, and if they really were tied to the Seperatist movement (which Dooku’s involvement supported) then they were being offered something, or at least wanted something from the wider movement.It took her nearly half an hour of nearly aimless searching to stumble onto something.The senator representing the Antar system was new. A gotal local that had been in politics for a while. There were a few articles saying that the politician was unpopular with the people. He had some ties with a few manufacturing firms that wanted to exploit Antar Five. A career politician with years of baby-kissing and a few postings across the system to back him up. Nothing too special. But it seemed that as soon as he was in the senate he instituted two changes that weren’t popular.First, an increase in the taxation rate that applied to several companies in the system. Notably, it only applied to native companies, not those that came from out-system. Or rather, those that came from out-system received a break that evened it out for them that wasn’t available to local companies.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.Then he sold the exploitation rights to Antar Five to a Corporate Alliance mining group.Taylor hummed to herself as she looked up the Corporate Alliance. There was a lot of information there. Too much.She backed out, and after pausing, followed another hunch and looked into the files that Dooku had sent for information about the Corporate Alliance.“That... doesn’t make sense,” Taylor said.Everything she saw painted the Corporate Alliance as an ally to the Separatist Movement. One that might not have been declaring its support aloud, but still a part of it.So, the instigating factor behind the rebellion and the start of a smaller separate movement on Antar Four was two fold. Increased taxation and likely the fall of a few local companies, and the sale of their resources to outsiders.But then, why would the terrorists ally themselves with the very same outsiders that were exploiting them?She found her answer after some more digging.It was a coincidence, really. She noticed a name twice, and decided to dig into it.Kaskai Thobooa was a member of the Gotal Assembly for Separation, a newer political faction that was becoming popular on Antar Four. Kaskai also worked with the Corporate Alliance for a few years.Taylor grinned when she found the final link.The Corporate Alliance didn’t only want to exploit Antar Five, they wanted to exploit the people of Antar Four too. Current Republic laws complicated that, likely for good reason. They were supporting the Gotal Assembly for Separation while promising to better support local businesses.In an economy that was taking a turn for the worse, that kind of support was probably worth a whole lot.Meanwhile, the Republic were doing nothing to assist. How could they, when the Gotal representative to the Republic was the cause of several of the root issues that the people of Antar four had to deal with?“Query: Have you concluded your research?”“I think so, yeah,” Taylor said. She stretched her legs and her one arm out until they shook. “I think this whole thing was started by one person being a greedy ass. Which sounds pretty typical, all things considered.”“Affirmation: The greed of organics is often their downfall, both on the personal and societal levels.”Taylor sniffed. “You’re not so free of greed yourself, HK.”“Objection: I am not greedy, master. I am merely cognizant of a need that cannot be fulfilled.”“A need for endless violence?” Taylor asked.“Chastisement: Do not make a habit of stating the obvious, it is distasteful.” HK-47 moved closer to the viewport, then turned to her. “Query: Have you discovered a solution to our newest problem?”“More or less,” Taylor said. “The problem’s the senator. He needs to be voted out, ideally. In the best case, someone more sensible will take him place. But...” she glanced at her datapad and tapped it a few times. “The next election isn’t for another five years.”“Conclusion: We will thus need to rely on more amusing methods to solve our problem.”“I guess so.” Taylor sat up straighter. “Can you check this report? It’s one of the last ones about Antar Four.”She turned the datapad around so that HK-47 could read it. The droid scanned the page, then leaned back up. “Statement: Jedi are coming to Antar Four.”“Yeah, that’s what they said. It looks like they’re going to tackle this... Roshu Sune group head on? Is that how it’s pronounced?” the datapad had translated everything to English, though she did question the quality of the translation in place. Proper nouns were often left untranslated though.“Affirmation: Close enough Master. Statement: Six jedi will make for a fine challenge, master.”“A challenge, right,” Taylor said. “Well, I’m not heading there for a fight. Dooku wants the problem solved. I’m sure we can negotiate things so that we find a more diplomatic solution to this mess.”“Prevarication: Yes Master, I’m certain that if you put your mind to it, we will find a peaceful solution to this issue.”Taylor eyed the droid, but its unmoving face gave nothing away.She shook her head and stood. “Come on, I’m tired of pouring over news reports. I've got that lightsaber thing. Jedi use those, right? You might as well show me how it works.”