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Vette had picked up a lot of odd jobs and stayed on the move over the past four years. Since the Wrath had ordered her and the rest of the crew to leave and make it back to Imperial space to let them know what happened to the Wrath and Darth Marr, her life had been a series of close calls and risks. She knew without the Wrath Dromand Kaas wasn’t safe for her, not with the Empire’s anti-alien sentiments. Pierce and Quinn were quickly pulled back into duty by the Imperial military in the wake of Zakuul’s attacks on the Empire and the Republic, and Jaesa had to contend with the Sith. Broomark hadn’t been any help either.
The Twi’lek had managed to get aboard one of the last ships to make it off Dromand Kaas before Zakuul had blockaded the planet, and ended up on a backwater Hutt planet for a few days before she managed to find passage elsewhere.
Most of the jobs she involved slicing into different systems for information and sometimes breaking into places, both of which she excelled at. She’d refined her talents even further during the years that she’d traveled with the Wrath, and she could safely say she could slice into just about any system.
It brought her into contact with a lot of scum, many of whom saw a Twi’lek and made assumptions. Every one of them would quickly find out that Vette was not a dancing girl in distress. She’d known how to fight even before she’d encountered Wrath, but running beside a Sith Lord who regularly tore through his enemies before breakfast had helped her perfect it to an artform.
Her skills in slicing, trap springing, sneaking and fighting made her a valuable asset, so she wasn’t entirely surprised when the Devarionian approached her with a possible job.
His body language told her that the name he gave her was fake, but the job that he offered was real. A shield generator prototype he’d been trying to get his hands on had fallen into the possession of a smuggler that had then pissed off a gang boss from the Electric Skulls, so the ship and everything aboard now lay in an Electric Skulls warehouse on Nar Shaddaa. He wanted Vette’s help in slicing past the Electric Skulls’ security and droids to get into the warehouse and get the generator.
Jek, as he claimed his name was, had a small ship that could get them to Nar Shaddaa. He had data chips that contained information he insisted the Electric Skulls might be interested in, the kind of information they could use for blackmail or ambushes.
“It’s a stealth shield generator, so you’ll have the perfect way to sneak back out when you get done,” Jek explained.
Vette eyed him warily. “And what’s to keep you from just leaving me on Nar Shaddaa after I get this generator for you?”
Jek gave an overly dramatic gasp. “You wound me! I would never do such a thing to a business partner.”
Vette snorted. “Something tells me not only would you do that to a business partner, but that you have.”
Jek sighed long sufferingly. “Alright, alrighty. Look, I’m looking to set something up for the long term. In the past couple years with all of the Eternal Empire ships and interference, I got separated from the crew I used to run with. While I can make it on my own, I got used to working with a team, and there are some jobs that are easier when there’s more than one person doing the work. I heard you were good at slicing, and while I’m good at everything else, it would be nice to have someone who knows what she’s doing, and who’s got experience breaking and entering, working with me.”
Vette thought about all the places she’d broken into, or gotten into, both before and after she’d worked with the Wrath. Compared to trying to steal relics from a Sith tomb, slicing through the Electric Skulls gang’s security would be easy.
“Exactly what are you planning on doing with this stealth shield generator after we get it?” she asked.
“Sell it, after I copy the specifications,” Jek shrugged when she gave him a look. “What, you expect me to just let that kind of thing go without learning how it’s made first?”
“Alright, but I get half of what you sell it for,” she told him.
“Eh, 60/40,” Jek countered.
“50/50,” Vette shot back.
They went back and forth for a while, Jek clearly thinking that he’d get the better end of the bargain, but Vette had learned how to be even more stubborn than Jek when she’d run with the Wrath’s crew, and eventually he agreed to a 50/50 split.
Of course, Vette made sure to have a couple back up plans just in case he did double-cross her. She’d seen enough people betray the Wrath to know it was better to be safe than sorry.
While Zakuul had attacked some planets controlled by the Hutts due to their proximity with Imperial and Republic worlds, most of Hutt Space had been left alone. The Zakuulians seemed to have little interest in the gangsters, which meant that business continued as it always had on many Hutt planets, so getting to Nar Shaddaa presented little trouble.
Vette checked her blaster, stun baton, and vibro knife as they exited the ship in the space port. Her best chance at getting the generator was to slip in quietly and avoid as many gangsters as possible to decrease the chance she might have to incapacitate or kill anyone. Bodies had a way of attracting unwanted attention.
“Alright, follow my lead to begin with,” Jek told her with a smirk. “I’ll get us in with the Electric Skulls, find out where they might be storing the thing. Once we’re in, you wander off and then sneak through the place until you find where the generator is. You can get by their security systems, right?”
Vette gave him an even stare.
He held up his hands. “Fine, fine, just making sure you can do your part.”
She didn’t bother answering that.
They took a taxi from the spaceport to the Promenade, and then to one of the many sectors of the Hutt moon. Jek seemed pretty confident he could keep the gangsters distracted while Vette disappeared into the bowels of their warehouse. There were only a few gang members in the office they met the gang boss in, but Vette wouldn’t put it past the gang to have other enforcers on standby. If she wanted to slip away unnoticed, she’d have to make herself seem as unremarkable as possible while Jek turned on his charm. The final plan they’d discussed had Jek distracting the gang boss and his enforcers while Vette stole the stealth generator, then the two of them meeting back at a cantina on the Promenade.
The Twi’lek affected an air of only mild interest in the goings on while she leaned up against a wall with a data pad in her hand while Jek launched into his talks with the Electric Skulls boss and his underlings, though in reality she remained on high alert. Depending on the person, some gangs might simply choose to jump them and take the data chips, while others might actually negotiate because they saw future business opportunities.
At least two of the enforcers kept their eyes on Vette while the others watched Jek and their boss. They weren’t stupid, which meant that Vette wasn’t going to be able to just sneak off. She’d need some sort of distraction to get some of the enforcers to leave. As smooth as Jek seemed, he might be able to keep the gang boss’s attention while he sent his enforcers to look into the “problem.”
She cast a bored glance at Jek and the gang boss and gave a sigh before appearing to turn her attention back to her data pad. She began slicing into the security system that the gang had in place remotely, looking for any weaknesses. It helped that Vette had been slicing into security systems far more complex than the one the Electric Skulls had in place when she’d been working for the Wrath.
It didn’t take long for Vette to get past the outermost security. She brought up the schematics of the warehouse as well as the surrounding sector. Immediately setting off alarms within the warehouse itself might be suspicious, but if she set off some of their exterior alarms…
She worked quickly, occasionally letting her eyes flicker up to ensure that no one would suspect what she was doing. At this point while they were still watching her, none of the enforcers seemed to take her as much of a threat. That worked in her favor.
The gang boss glanced up, annoyance flashing over his expression as Vette set off one of the gang’s exterior alarms around the outside of the warehouse. “Go check that out,” he ordered two of the enforcers. They exchanged a look and gave a sharp nod, hurrying out of the office. Vette appeared to only glance up briefly at the two as they slipped out of the office.
Remote slicing into the internal alarms was a little bit more difficult, but Vette figured out how to bypass the sensors to trip them. The gang boss appeared even more frustrated when the internal alarms went off and he glared at his enforcers. “Who managed to get past them? Go deal with it, or I’ll deal with it myself.”
Only one enforcer remained in the office after the others hurried off to check the internal alarm, all of them clearly deciding that neither Jek nor Vette was a real threat to their boss. Vette listened, noting that Jek was now pitching possible future business opportunities, claiming he had sources within both the Republic and Empire he could take advantage of. The remaining enforcer glanced briefly at Vette, but then turned his attention to Jek, clearly listening in on that conversation.
Vette had already analyzed the schematics of the warehouse thoroughly by this point, and had been able to identify two rooms she thought the stealth generator might be located in. The schematics had included a plan of the building’s ventilation system, and she knew if she entered at the right point, she should be able to drop into the rooms of interest directly from the vents.
She moved quickly, her lithe form and long practice allowing her to move quickly out of the office, so softly no one would immediately notice her absence. Vette maneuvered through the labyrinth of crates in the warehouse in a winding path, slipping past security cameras until she came to a ventilation shaft opening she quickly pried off with a multitool and then crawled inside.
Moving based on memory now, Vette crawled through the ductwork, able to hear the movement of enforcers and other gang members below her. They seemed to have the impression someone had slipped past both the external alarms and the internal ones of the edges of the warehouse, which meant that they were now searching the interior.
Vette was struck by inspiration then. She crawled past a vent and pressed herself back against the wall of the duct, fishing her datapad out of her jacket. She sliced back into the security system, then with several clever maneuvers in the code, set the alarms to begin going off randomly in different parts of the warehouse. She listened for several moments as she heard scrambling below her and boots running off into several directions.
That should keep the enforcers busy for at least a few more minutes.
It gave her enough time to crawl through the vents to the first of the two smaller rooms she’d seen in the building plans. It turned out they were two connected rooms, the outer room containing a security station. Her luck seemed to be holding as the room was empty of beings. She opened the vent into the room and dropped to the floor with a graceful roll, quickly spotting a security droid. She lunged forward, hitting the droid with her stun baton in just the right spot to cause it to temporarily short circuit.
“Sorry,” she remarked to the droid, “But I can’t have you giving me away.”
As sparks rose from the droid, she moved over to the security station and sliced into it. It took her a few more minutes to slice through the security door that led into the second room, but it finally slid open, revealing a small storage room with shelves of various gadgets the gang had collected with the intent of selling them later.
The stealth generator itself was a small item that fit on a person’s arm like a gauntlet. She lifted it up, examining it a moment before sliding the device onto her arm. As she did so, she heard boots outside the security room. She wouldn’t make it to the vent in time to avoid whatever gang members were out there.
Vette activated the stealth generator, pressing herself up against a wall as three enforcers burst into the security room, shouts of dismay and anger spilling from them when they saw the open vent. She had to move carefully around them to get out of the storage room and then through the security room into the main warehouse.
She needed to get out of the warehouse and out of the sector. She could see a flicker around her as the stealth generator concealed her presence. Vette maneuvered her way out of the security room, then back through the warehouse itself. There was an entrance just outside of the warehouse that led into the maintenance shafts for this sector. As long as the stealth generator kept working, she should be able to sneak into the shaft, then out an exit from the tunnels somewhere near a taxi.
She moved quickly after that, dancing around the movement of gang enforcers until she reached the entrance to the maintenance shafts and shimmed down the ladder. She kept the stealth generator running past a creature in the tunnels, not flicking the generator off until she was safely out of the maintenance shafts in an alleyway.
With a deep breath, she casually walked out of the alleyway and to the taxi, glad to leave behind this sector. When she finally made it back to the ship, she found Jek waiting for her with a smirk.
She switched taxis at another sector, not risking the chance of anyone following her before she finally took one to the Promenade. When she made her way into the back room Jek had secured at the Slippery Slope Cantina, she found the Devarionian already there, boots up on a table, smirking at her.
“Hey kid, good work back there,” he told her. “We work well together.”
“Yeah, because you left all the hard work to me,” Vette told him tartly as she put her hands on her hips. “I see you made it back here without any trouble.”
“Oh, there was trouble,” he assured her, “I just managed to give them the slip.” He gave her a curious look. “Clearly the generator works since you made it back here.”
“Yeah, it works alright, but I’m not foolish enough to rely just on that. I used maintenance tunnels to get out of the sector,” Vette informed him.
“Clever.” He gestured to the table. “Alright, let me see it.”
Vette rolled her eyes and removed the gauntlet from her wrist, placing it on the table. Jek poked at it for a few minutes, and she swore she could see credit signs in his eyes.
“So,” she began, crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s your real name?”
Jek grinned up at her, “Well, I guess you’ve proven yourself enough.” He waved extravagantly, “Gaunt Rennow, at your service.” He tapped the gauntlet, “This will bring in a lot of credits. What will you do with your share?”
“Get off this pit of a moon,” Vette replied.
“Nar Shaddaa is a perfectly good place to do business, the opportunities are endless,” he argued. “But after this job it may not be a bad idea to make ourselves scarce for a while. So, what do you say, kid, partners?”
Vette eyed him and considered the prospects she’d had since losing Wrath. Gault was a little sleazy, but he was the kind of sleazy that pulled scams for credits rather than the other kind. There were worse options.
“Alright,” Vette said at last, “But next time, you’re the one crawling through the vents.”