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Hayde Gofai, by @Star_Wars_Legends_Illustrated
SBI Officer Warns of Conspiracy
GALACTIC CITY, CORUSCANT - "Someone in the Republic government is going to great lengths to hide something," alleged Senior Senate Bureau of Intelligence official Vyn Narcassan in a regular media briefing.
During the course of increased surveillance of anti-Republic factions, Narcassan claims to have uncovered a communications channel that directly bypassed "even the most highly classified detection procedures." The decorated SBI officer asserts that the connected remote node self-destructed at the first sign of a trace, destroying any evidence of the unauthorized conduit.
When asked how unusual such a find may be, Narcassan replied, "Not even the Supreme Chancellor could order a line that silent. Someone on Coruscant has something to hide -- and not your day-to-day bribery and adultery."
While the Chancellor's office characterized the find as "gravely disturbing, if true," Senator Ronet Coorr (Iseno) remained highly skeptical. "Is Narcassan deliberately trying to end his Intelligence career? He's chasing a phantom."
From HoloNet News
“I’m the Treasury,” Hayde Gofai said as she sat down across from the rough-looking blond man in the dining car of the hovertrain sleekly winding its way through the Uscru Entertainment District towards the Outlander Club.
“Every credit of it,” the man responded, looking her up and down, from her elaborately coiffed blonde hairdo, to her chic clubbing outfit, to her spiffy dancing pumps. “Jahan Numm,” he introduced himself.
“Hayde Gofai,” she responded. Having exchanged codephrases, she relaxed. “You know the plan?”
“Of course! Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Numm responded confidently. “I’m the best sabacc player in the tri-district!”
“You fill me with confidence. I thought we were throwing our credits into the flux field.”
“Only a fool plays the cards dealt him.”
“Oh, so there will be what you call bluffing ,” Hayde challenged, her nerves adding an extra edge to her banter.
It was one thing, Hayde thought as she and Numm traded flirtatious insults, and the wait-droid brought exotic grilled subterranean whitefish to the table, to be a thrill seeker. Since she was an adolescent, Hayde had loved adventure and adrenaline. Possessed of a head for numbers, she’d done well as a low level official in the Republic Treasury, but spent all the credits she earned on climbing the most dangerous parts of the Manari Mountains, skyhook diving, even spelunking in the Undercity. But all of that paled compared to her past year, when Vyn Narcassan visited her in her dull little office. “How would you like to chase some real thrills, Miss Gofai?” he’d said, his dimples belying the danger she sensed about the man as he smiled at her. But she did want to chase those thrills, so badly. So she said yes.
That yes led to training in the Senate Bureau of Intelligence (SBI). Asset skills and regulations - along with Vyn’s careful personal tutoring in wall climbing, covert slicing, and psychological analysis. When added to her forensic accounting training, she was the perfect element to slip into Narcassan’s operation. The senior agent was chasing down a connection between that puzzling communication channel he’d announced on the HoloNet a week or two ago, the massive Binring Biomedical Conglomerate corporation, and the strange overtures Binring was making to Black Sun, the deadly organized crime syndicate. All of those connections had led her here, chewing some truly delicious fish across from one of Black Sun’s mid-level operatives, a gambler and assassin that Narcassan had been eyeing for quite some time.
The conversation turned from cards to psychological analysis, and Numm attempted to deduce her history and personality from her face and attire.
“You’re attractive, and that’s a problem for you. You are more interested in thrills than the attention it brings you, which you compensate for with expensive hairdos and clubbing antics - not to mention a little minor corruption, funding a Black Sun gambler in a big sabacc tournament!”
“All right,” Hayde riposted. “From the tattoos on your arms, you came up from the Undercity, and think they give you enough intimidation factor to offset your lack of real family connections in the organization.” When Numm twitched, she leaned forward, smirking. “Oh, yes, we know about your ambitions to become a Vigo even though you don’t have connections to one of the major power centers in Black Sun. That’s why we’ve picked you - we have faith in you and think you can be a real asset to our plans.” In truth, Hayde was spinning a complete line of static. While Narcassan had given her a detailed psychological workup of Numm and his immediate contacts in Black Sun, SBI had no real plans for the syndicate’s power plays. That was up to the Coruscant Constabulary anyway. No, this was all about finding out what Black Sun had that Binring wanted, and why it was so important to someone so hidden in the Senate structure that even an agent as veteran, wily, and brilliant as Narcassan couldn’t ferret him out.
After a few more sassy back and forths, Hayde got up and headed to the front of the train, the better to watch the vast skyscrapers slip past the sleek engine. Even a minor thrill was a thrill, after all!
#
Arriving at her next stop, the Outlander Club, Hayde connected briefly with Numm to let him know she intended to meet him in the sabacc rooms after a few other errands. Little known to him, those errands included picking up two separate dead drops from two other operations Narcassan had set in motion. A noisy gang of swoop riders pushed past her to get inside, and she noticed their hot-rodded vehicles parked nearby. As she passed through the strobing lights of the club, she noticed the Nalle triplet sisters enacting their elaborate datacard retrieval con, then met up with holojournalist Sne Wo to pass on a tip about Binring, hopefully giving Narcassan more opportunities to glean information from other parts of the massive food and chemical production conglomerate.
As she tossed down her Halmad Prime grain alcohol shot with Sne, she noticed a handsome young Jedi walking in, alert, head swiveling around. She smiled appreciatively as the Jedi’s dark eyes landed on her, hoping that he might consider bending the Jedi vows to get to know her a bit better. But he clearly had other things on his mind besides companionship or thrill-seeking, as his partner, an older red-haired Jedi sliced off an assassin’s arm. As the limb fell to the ground, Hayde noticed the woman’s face shifting radically from human appearance to something else - a shapeshifter! As the handsome Jedi dragged the now three-limbed shapeshifter out of the club, she threw one last appreciative and regretful glance at him before returning to business.
Bidding farewell to Sne and palming the datacard the Nalle sisters had copied, she followed their target - Ras Binring, heir of the current CEO of Binring, as he headed down to the sabacc tables, where Jahan Numm waited. The tournament started, and Hayde made sure to sweep in dramatically, catching Numm’s eye with her almost dancelike entrance. Poor fellow - he didn’t know that both his superiors and the SBI needed him to lose this game, so Black Sun could pass whatever they’d given him unwittingly to Binring. As she glided up to his chair, she could see beads of sweat growing on his brow.
“Half the table is watching you,” he muttered, causing her to smile even more.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll take advantage of that to beat them all.”
But instead, he lost, and lost. “I need more credit, Hayde!” he insisted angrily. “I know Binring’s tell; I can beat him!” Holding firm, Hayde refused. In desperation, Numm tossed a datacard on the table.
“The deed to an old chemical manufacturing plant on a Corporate Sector planet, Saffalore. Perfect for development and shipping, as they are the friendliest administration for any business!” Hayde saw Ras Binring’s eyes light up, and knew this indeed was what Binring wanted from Black Sun. As the cards flew around the table, in and out of the flux field, the tension in the room rose. Despite Numm’s frantic card manipulations, Binring revealed an Idiot’s Array, winning easily. Grinning smugly at the impotent Numm, Binring and his two intimidating bodyguards swept past the hapless Black Sunner to collect their winnings.
#
“I’ll kill him!” raged Numm as he stormed out of the club. Hayde could see he meant it, as he fingered the holster of his nasty-looking Czerka Watchman blaster pistol.
“No, wait!” she tried to reason with him, but Numm leapt onto a nearby swoop bike and blasted off with a siren wail. Desperately, Hayde keyed her comlink. “Narcassan, he’s going to kill Binring!”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” Vyn’s smooth voice assured her. “I’m almost there - we have a plan for this!”
#
How do I get myself into these circumstances? Hayde thought as she dangled from a wire in a tunnel howling with wind and speeder sounds. As she slowly rotated on the wire, she saw the Coruscant nightscape whirl about her in a riot of neon colors, blue-orange midnight sky, and then the dark swirl of the tunnel. Narcassan, you better know what you’re doing! She saw the lights of a swoop bike - Numm’s bike, she assumed - as it grew at an alarming rate. Just as the lights were about to blind her and she saw the swoop desperately swerve to avoid hitting her, she heard a hiss of compressed gas as a thin line shot out, quickly expanding into a weblike substance, snatching the rough blond form of Jahan Numm from his swoop seat and tangling him in a hopeless mess. What a shot with that Stohkli Spray Stick! Hayde marveled - Vyn certainly had hidden depths - as he emerged from his marksman’s blind. A loud explosion from the side of the tunnel startled Hayde as the swoop bike crashed in a glorious orange ball of light that quickly collapsed on itself, leaving a smoking pile of debris falling to the ground.
“And now, we have them,” Narcassan said, and Hayde could just hear the dimples crinkling as he picked up Tumm. “Saffalore.” Hayde shook her head. At least the thrills this evening - from a handsome Jedi and his partner slinging their laser blades around, to the high stakes of the sabacc game, and now to a deadly game of bluffavian with a swoop bike - had been some of the best thrills she’d found yet.
#
Weeks later, after the galaxy had changed, Hayde looked across the table of the Acclamator -class troop carrier mess room at the hardened clone sergeant. She chewed her tasteless ration cube - noting the “Binring Biomedical” logo on its wrapper, also on the transparisteel foil tube of the sergeant’s nasty green nutrient paste, which he consumed without either relish or disgust. Though the cube was pretty terrible, nothing compared to that exquisite whitefish weeks ago on the train, Hayde couldn’t help but feel thrills coursing through her veins. With the onset of the Clone Wars, Narcassan had thrown his assets into the battlefield, determined to gather as much intel as possible. She’d already nominated her fellow Treasury agent, Besany Wennan, for a similar embedded observer post, but Wennan was hunting down some kind of embezzlement case on Coruscant, so Narcassan had gone with her backup choice, adjacent bureaucracy Ministry of Finance analyst Joram Kithe. Some thought him lazy, which Narcassan had assured her would likely look good to their sinister boss, Armand Isard, but Hayde had a sense there might be something a bit more in Joram’s heart than his underperforming record indicated.
Whatever the case, Hayde herself was looking forward to this mission - a straightforward smash and grab of a Separatist scientist said to be developing an improved lubricant for the CIS’s droid army. Her job was to observe and report on the efficiency of these troops, as well as to collect as much information on the CIS’s economy as she could. But nobody said she couldn’t have some fun while doing it.
“I’m the Treasury,” she said.
“Every credit of it,” responded the sergeant, with the eerily same voice as every other clone trooper surrounding her. “Welcome aboard, agent Gofai. How can I help you?”
Hayde smirked. “Do you have any speeder bikes?”