"Don't forget - bar between shifts but I catch anyone at it during a shift and I'll demonstrate when no one around here is drunk. And if they are, they regret it. You hear me?" Her talk with Cassidy had gone well, seeing a rage in the man, not quite a black hatred, baking just beneath the surface. "Show up for work drunk, you're going to face me," the woman warned, the 'ominous' threat something far less than, well, ominous.
She might have a blaster at her side and a saber tucked in her jacket but to a hardened man she probably seemed like a toothless nexu. If she had to though, she had teeth. And claws. And the Force, which made up for her poor shooting. It was always effective to rip the intoxication from someone and leave them painfully, fully sober. It was a nasty nasty trick but one she'd used to great effect on friends and foes. It taught a lesson - the blistering hangover's headache without any of the remaining buzz.
For his part Jock seemed to give her a nod and went about his business, men lined up at intervals giving the small office a nearly official feeling to it. She couldn't shake the feeling that it was enticing another attack from one source or another though, and no matter what Jean said - that they knew their jobs, knew the risk - Book would rather have the place be destroyed again than risk another round of deaths all because she'd set up on the Prom.
But convincing anyone of that? Apparently it was a hopeless cause. It was nice to have allies that ignored what you thought was best for what they thought was best.
---
Touching back down in Republic - or at least Hutt space - the woman finally, finally unbuckled her helm, breaking the hermetic seal on her suit. Taking gulps of air Book sprawled in the chair, Shae'andri'lar piloting the Fury.
At least navi-systems were pretty similar. Otherwise she knew that she'd never hear the end of it from her Master who had, of course, played her part - the Master taking the Padawan's orders because in Imperial space it was Book who played the lead and her Master her bodyguard.
So far the trail for K'raal had grown so cold that Book felt like they were on the trail of something else. Lasy An'uva's labs and experiments had grated on Shae in a way she'd rarely seen; her Master was usually much calmer but she'd been sliding back to the handle-with-violence methods that they'd all strayed away from. For her part the proximity to the sheer masses of cybernetics had grated on her to the point where she'd nearly drawn her saber. And the anticipation that near-action had created...
If a single one of the droids had spoken at that moment, protocol or not she knew she'd've struck. No amount of calming presence had diminished the utter fear that droids awoke in her, the fear of metal, of the loss of Force, of the loss of sight and vision and life.
Not even the commission to find a Krayt dragon could dim the fear she still felt. No muttered order to meditate could either. She kept hearing Hostility in her mind, the screaming echoes of constant agony and pain and terror; she kept remembering the moment when Hostility had done something and she'd been unable to move.
So now they had a new commission from An'uva and Book was uncertain if they were any closer to finding K'raal through this.
Setting the helm aside Book laughed sardonically.
---
Kolto had done its job as much as it could, Force aiding the healing along as best as possible too. She still was in bad shape, hiding the limp she ached to walk with to show the best possible face to her new staff. She'd told Norok about the attack and exchanged impressions of the fighting style but she felt like nothing could make up for a failure so profound. And then the shame of being tricked. Oh that would stay with her for a long while.
Until she got one up on the Cathar, in fact.
But as she laid back against the office chair, arm slung over the back even though the action caused her pain, she thought about the fight and what she had learned. It looked, at least, that some of her intelligence had been accurate. She had been alone. She preferred to act alone. She had been involved - it appeared at least - in the fall of Taris from Republic hands, the battle for Balmorra, and Corellia. Rumors even placed the Cathar occasionally on Nar, a fact which she needed to make Schramme aware of because as he'd said, war was coming back to the Promenade.
War.
First the Dheroveer, now attacks on Jedi personnel. The slaughter at Lantillies of the negotiators and that civil war on the brink of spreading. Book pulled off her lenses and scrubbed where eyes would've been had she had them, standing up from her chair and moving to the now-beeping terminal.
It looked like her inquiries in to Sprowl had started to come back.
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