Ciphered Holos

The small tent outcropping Aran had settled in to - nothing too permanent at the old 'Rest to avoid taking space from someone who was there more - had been torn down silently. Canvas repacked, stakes pulled up, and left in the armory for the next person to use. She'd put some final touches on a security system and knew that Nia would take over finishing what she'd started there - the woman was better at slicing than she was, and paired up with the Chiss it'd be air-tight as anything could be.

She'd left a few other things back in the Vault. The files linked in to the Marran Archives she'd left but her own databases had been packed up silently, efficiently, with every last wire pulled and wrapped. She'd landed even on the outskirts and gone 'round to the enclosures and packed off the specific guards she knew she could get away with. Aran had sat on Chompy's shoulder for what felt like the last time, giving him a pat and telling the drouk that the Marran would take care of him while she was gone. Sparks had somehow burrowed into the cargo hold of her beloved 'rustbucket' with Joust and Featherduster. She'd given the kitties some scritches and told them to do just what she'd spent her time teaching them.

On Ihlrath's desk she'd left the staff, a few datachips, and a datapad. She didn't even make a goodbye around the 'Rest but kept it looking like, for all the world, she was doing just another wild trip out someplace, like always. The datapad had a few tidbits - her research on the system, scant as it was. The notes from their city infiltration. Her comms frequencies, and a spike if someone needed to get ahold of her. The last made Aran grin, figuring that they'd be right enough.

/File access.../

It's not a goodbye, it's just a 'see you later' really. I've got my teeth on something and if there's a slip it'll cost a lot more than a lost cover this time, but it's for the right reasons. I know this war and system is important - but what I've found- it's just as important, and I'm in a position to stop it.

Find someone who'll take care of my people. I did tell you I didn't think I was the best fit but maybe if I end up deciding to settle down I'll set up tent at the Rest some decades in the future, eh? Make sure you keep everyone around.

If you need to get a hold of me those two frequencies I've locked into my equipment. Disabled Kanth's trackers though to avoid a problem if my current company decides to ask why I have them. The spike will tag a transmission to my old drops.

I left Chompy for Sien, hopefully she'll take good care of him again like she did before. He might hug her first time he spots her. Sorry about that! Expect me to stop by for the 'hutt later, can't fit a whole lot in my ship. Might be a while.

I'll keep my eyes - proverbial ones - on the lookout for anything interesting you might want to dig for.

-Aran

Her grin faded as she settled in her seat, the droid lifting the ship off the surface. For all that her note and tone had been jovial she didn't feel like it really, unsettled sleep and an uneasy gnaw in her stomach keeping even the moments of respite laden with dread. Rubbing her forehead she could hear the scratch, rake, and [is]screams[/i] still, the dreadful echo from deep in the tunnels and the sickly sweet scent of fresh blood, malaise of sickness- dead air hanging the moment when the vents had stopped functioning.

She'd gotten a sample of the package - and the exploded warheads had destroyed the facility. She'd taken a few samples of what she hoped would prove to be an improved rakghoul vaccine; time would tell, if Zach got them to the SIS and they believed the seemingly wild story, if she'd eeked some good from it all. Even knowing the research was destroyed - every scientist who had some knowledge on the project had died - it was a scant victory and it turned her stomach.

It'd take the Empire ages to restart that weaponization. But the Black Barge Collective had it instead, and while it was a lesser of two evils, it was still an evil. Sure the Empire might never pick the project up again... but whatever the agent had been, the few reports she'd gotten had been... gruesome.

And on the other side of Taris Tyron was there somewhere - infiltrating another research facility where Czerka was working on another strain of the rakghoul plague.

The ship lurched slightly as the droid gave his mistress a not-so-gentle reminder that she had cargo. Holding her hands up she padded out of the cockpit, leaving the flight droid to his preferred solitude and frowning. She really felt like a coward leaving while the Marran were fighting a war, trying to find their history again, scrambling for their place in the galaxy. So why did you, eh? Shame? Knowing they'd disapprove of just how you're accomplishing your work? Guilt for lying to them? The voice was insidious but her own, the woman pulling the tie from her hair as she worried a lip, fingernails digging in the wall before she shook her head.

"I wonder if this is what Zach feels like," she muttered, pausing a moment as the ship rocked, a tauntaun bleating from a room or three down. She'd tried arguing the 'high ground' to him about the Czerka scientists. To not kill them all, that the project could get stopped without death. It could, but the alternative she'd laid at him had been, in its own way, just as bad as murder; they'd live but what was life without sanity or a mind? But it'd been alive still and that had seemed, somehow, better.

And then she'd stood by, wired a pile of biological warheads to blow and sunk a weapons factory, condemning anyone still alive in it to death. Because there wasn't enough time for another, cleaner death for them all. Because the half-transformed scientists, shambling in a trapped near-death of the Force but not quite lost to the form they had been, deserved an actual death.

And if it came down to that time again Aran thought she might swallow her objections. "We can't let anyone get this, the Empire or the Republic." "No shit," she groused. Rakghouls, semi-sentient and capable of obeying orders. Planet killers, contagions to wipe out life on a planet, spreading as easily as wildfire.

How many other little projects were slipping through her hands that were like Taris? Her head turned and she leaned against the wall, holding a hand up and slowly trying to remember the exact pattern of Force before she frowned, hand dropping. Blaster, saber... if you need them, Aran, you've already lost.

"All right, practice..." She started to move again, grabbing a datapad as she walked past it and patting her coat. She started to rattle off phrases under her breath, saying them once in a cant, switching and adding accents. She was going to break herself of her speech patterns before she slipped again. Artia needed to be a hair apprehensive, untrusting of Kashira after her stunt, but still... loyal. Either to the credits or the Barge itself wasn't a question she needed to consider yet but she knew it was going to come up.

She needed to find a xenobiologist. "Phylok." She turned and headed for a console, settling in the chair and, running a hand through her hair, pulling up a window.