Mychae's present - the sabotage charges, thermal detonators, a brace of incendiaries and the Meltdown Special - were on her bed when she heard a ping on the terminal. A tilt of her head and the woman stopped, a hand hitting the butt of her blaster as soon as she saw the Republic Forces tag on the transmission. But then she told herself she was over-reacting, because if Republic Forces could actually arrest her, sitting on the pad of her hangar tucked into the worst part of town she could pay rent in, then they would have. So it was unlikely that a cozy little room with the friendliest whores Nar Shaddaa seemed to possess was going to be where a spec ops team crashed in through windows and yelled about her rights.
The idea was crazy. She wasn't sure if the clear head from detoxing off the spice had triggered the desire for action instead of fleeing, but Aran acknowledged that it might be more closer to a desire for revenge and she really needed to work on that. She was getting back into the habit - which had to be a good one, right? - of finding Sith and disrupting them. Information or, her grin cracking across her face as she patted the charges, hiring their folks to work for her. She started unloading her pockets of everything she'd collected on the Promenade, leaning on a chair in the Womp Rat before a wave of dizziness made her stagger and sit.
Breathe in, breathe out she told herself softly, whispering the words under her breath as her hands whitened, pulling Force in and around herself as she fought off the side-effects. The memory of Sarai's comm call the day before, taunting, losing patience- her exhale hissed out between her teeth. She'd been polite and kept her and her company out of the Cartel's affairs but she didn't want to risk that anymore.
First Proteus' lab. Warehouse. Once that was dealt with Aran promised herself she'd pull out her very old training holos and brush up on combat. Then she'd get back to work. Enigma was a good target to start with. On the side, she could work on destabilizing the Cartel under Sarai's control and- when she stood it was with a grunt.
She pulled a chair over, sitting herself down and finally listening to first one message - this one from some honest-voiced soldier, she thought dimly - and then the unexpected second.
---
The trip to Voss had been smooth. This time she wasn't in a cell with someone guarding the threshold or trying, frantically, to shove her mind down the paths of meditation - so the trip was almost pleasant. She had a knapsack over her back, a saber on her belt, and the holster for her blaster tied to her thigh, the draw mechanism of it smooth as silk to her hand now. And in a boot she'd tucked one lung knife, just in case. She wasn't expecting trouble this time, taking the slightly bulky and ramshackle stealth generator and adding it to her belt. She still didn't like Voss, exactly, but some of the memories of the planet below were special to her.
She let out a breath of air as she moved, slowly and carefully tucking her presence and feel in the Force away - she really was... horrible at the skill. But eventually she'd picked up and figured out that if she worked on it, she could hold it long enough. The stealth generator would do the rest, today - Aran checked the thin wires and slim display tucked up the sleeve of her jacket. Generator, wires, knapsack, wiring, transmitters... everything she'd studied and worked on was ready.
She slid into the packs of visitors - tourists she guessed, from the happy chatter - after mind-tricking her way through customs. It made the woman a tad bit uneasy but - well, guards and goals. There were guards, she had goals - she slipped out of the foreign and confusing thought patterns swiftly, giving her head a shake as she once more slung the sack across her back. Once she was wandering the city she headed into a small shoppe, made small chatter then headed in to the back. Sometimes it helped to know odd people everywhere - Artia picked up speeder parts and did work in the back metalshoppe attached to the merchant's building. Which mean she had a place to disappear from for a few hours - and that was what she did, focusing and twisting her mind into the strange meditation-like patterns she'd found enabled her to keep the stealth tricks going, Force hidden.
Approaching the building Aran started to unroll her kit, slicing into the security systems slowly, steadily. Once she had a hole left for the return trip later this evening she pulled back out and then sat back on her heels. The building had people in it, something she hadn't expected. The former Jedi pulled out her display and, under the cover of her stealth field now, still doing her damnest to concentrate and keep her Force hidden in the regular ebbs and flows of the world, she started to plant the charges.
Now she needed to change her initial plans for the night. It gave her more to think on, a distraction as she couldn't help but feel that maybe something she'd done - Brecker's job - had contributed to the death of someone she'd grown to care for.
She added a new task after destroying Proteus' lab on her mental list - find Brecker. Make him talk. She felt a flicker of her control break and slung the now-empty bag over her shoulder and started to creep away before her fraying control got her noticed.
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