Slumping into a chair Book tried to ignore the blaster scores on the mostly-destroyed table. The office was empty of even the normal security a business on Nar kept, Book having finished writing the death notices - where there was even a next of kin on file - and sending what few she could out. Most of the staff had been gone when the attack had struck, and given what little she'd picked up and seen that night on Taris she - the company - had gotten off lightly.
Throwing her lot in with that group was costing her more and more but she felt it was still doing... the right thing. She didn't even know half of the people she'd worked with except tangentially. She'd met Karyn once but now he had some tie with Shukla and Ahn'akiir and Lisoni made on hell of a pilot. And Ahn'akiir was deadly with a weapons system.
And apparently Eron had been rescued. And it'd been the cause of grief, and pain, and blood. And she didn't even know the why of what tied that band of misfits together except it had something to do with Eron. She remembered the farmstead on Taris, scrubbing her face with the heel of her palm as if that'd magically give her sleep, and the sheer size of the installation. The tech at the - base, for lack of a better word.
She scrubbed her face again, pulling off the protective lenses and rubbing at the eyesockets as if she were human, tired and sleepy. It felt like it was par for the course again - nothing made sense. So she took a breath and counter down slowly, backwards from a hundred until she felt like the world could make some marginal sense.
Akkai was on the run and had shaved his head and removed his horns. Doc - Llinos - had popped back up on Taris before business called her away. Sriia had been attacked by a Lord Sprowl. Tel-Raan had demonstrated he could remove a security guard's hands. Their trip to Taris had resulted in packets getting away from her slice on the company's communications network. Bennet had been discharged dishonorably. Jean and Bennet had gotten into a fight. Shukla and Bennet got into another fight. A defector from the infamous One-thirteen had turned up as a new ally for Jade Company.
The world, she decided, couldn't possibly make sense. She wasn't quite sure where it'd started to look pear-shaped, but there was no way it could make sense if so much was happening in it, and that didn't include the rest. Soterius, the padawans running loose as if the galaxy had ended (she carefully avoided her own actual status when lamenting the nature of padwan), Torlem - who she needed to ask after, as they'd gotten permission for him to go to Taris and it wasn't like Torlem to not show up. Then there was this Sprowl character, and her promise to Sriia to get whatever information possible to the woman.
Reaching into the desk she pulled out a datapad, a comm, and a bottle of whiskey. Pouring a glass of whiskey Book slid it aside and put her feet up on the table, datapad in her lap and perusing the retrieved information.
---
The conversation with her Master had gone better than Book had expected. Before she'd gone nose-first into investigating this Sprowl Book had actually remembered and obeyed Rule #1, don't do stupid alone, and asked permission. It meant her Master was going along for the ride but well, that was to be expected. Shay, after all, had hung around Nar. She had that brand of crazy in her, buried deep down behind a whirl of caution but still, there.
Jean's brief appearance had brought the sliver of good news for the night: a security detail on the Sanguine offices. She'd long ago given up hiring one of her own after two staff slaughters - one by a mad Sith, a second by the Blade - so someone else thinking it was a good idea sat... uneasily with her. On the one hand, a security detail meant that attacks - like the two the offices were still recovering from - would be a thing largely of the past.
On the other hand it put more people's lives on the line for a set of offices.
Book leaned back, datapad forgotten.
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