Dak Thorin was not happy, in fact, it could be said that he was upset. His normally exuberant face was locked in a grimace as his fingers worked fast as he attempted to patch up the hyperdrive on the Blue Otana. Somehow Pasha or Mikal had managed to sever the ion injector, which was no small feat, given it was in the exact center of the unit.

All that was visible outside the confines of the hyperdrive compartment was a pair of legs, Dak's body entirely inverted in his quest to fix the Blue Otana, or BO, as he preferred to call the ship. Every so often he had to twist akwardly, because being upside down so long was starting to make his nose bleed. Sighing as a spatter of blood painted the manifold he calmly reached down with his left hand, wiping it away with a blue rag that was held in the confines of his maintenance jump suit.

"I suppose this would be easier if I had remembered a light," he mused aloud, lamenting the fact that he had forgotten his lamp. The words were only barely understandable as he gripped his datapad in his teeth, using the dimly backlit screen to see his way around the delicate module.

Sliding a clamp around the hose in question, he fitted a small crimp, splicing both sides together. It would suffice, if he could ever convince his friends to leave Coruscant. Then again, thought the upside down repairman, they did have good drinks here...

Pasha was, in every literal sense of the word, drunk. She had even somehow managed to reach cloud nine, which just so happened to be one small step beneath alcohol poisoning and quite possibly death. However, she was no amateur to the art of consuming ridiculously large quantities of alcohol, and she had the liver pains to prove it. It took time and serious dedication to reach the nigh impossible level of inebriation she had attained this day, which led to the sole reason she liked Coruscant, considering it was the capital of the New Order: their cantinas never closed.

The Corellian had been drinking like this almost every day since the Sonata of War had fallen into the hands of the New Order, her sorrows efficiently drowned and forgotten within the pleasant haze of inebriation. It was through a good tide of fortunes that Mikal had been with her when the Corvette had been apprehended, and even better fortunes that the son of Aldric Thorin - Dak Thorin - had found her only just recently. She and Mikal had a penchant for getting into trouble; the specific kind of trouble that required the YT-2000 Blue Otana getting repaired.

Pasha's right arm was currently draped around Mikal's shoulders, as he was in fact the only thing keeping her upright, though he wasn't walking all that straight himself. A victorious smile was adorned upon her features as they both strolled into the hangar bay, at last returning from their supposedly brief visit to the cantina that had somehow turned into several hours. She had managed to accrue five-hundred credits through her gambling, and as far as she was concerned she had made credits rather than spent them.

"By the Force, Dak," Pasha slurred out, a somewhat worried expression crossing her features upon seeing a pair of legs sticking out awkwardly from the Blue Otana. "Are you still alive in there?"

Mikal had been drinking with Pasha, of course; the two of them had hardly parted, since the Sonata incident. He had his hand around her waist, keeping her upright. It was a position he'd simply grown used to, over the past month or so - she drank like the world was ending. And he had just put back a few drinks to keep from noticing the ever-present soldiers, trooping around everywhere in Coruscant. He recognized the battalion, which made his feeling of unease worse. They were the Hundred and First - sentries, and green recruits not yet seen true deployment. No telling what they'd do, given something they'd have no experiance dealing with. New soldiers cracked under too much pressure. Their superiors were never very forgiving.

Having finally reached the hanger, where he had docked the Blue Otana, Mikal placed his hand on the arm which Pasha had draped over his shoulders. The two of them were almost of a height, but he was a little shorter, which more often than not made him the butt of bawdy tavern jokes. Having to hold her up beside him whilst she stumbled around inebriated usually didn't help matters. He had the strong urge to drop her, but refrained.

"Can you walk?"

Dak straightened slightly, heaving himself out of the hyperdrive manifold with the strength of his arms. Unfortunately his balance wasn't quite equal to his strength, but what did one expect from a fighter pilot fix-it guy? Staggering haphazardly as his head cleared the hyperdrive manifold, he almost fell, only barely catching his balance against the Blue Otana. Smoothing the front of his jumpsuit with the back of his left hand Dak's fingers thrummed against the starship.

"Well, if it isn't the merry partiers, you'll be happy to know that the airlock modifications are almost complete," the youthful repair man said as he motioned with the hand that had been smoothing his jumpsuit.

Mounting rings had been set against the outer hull of the Blue Otana right over where the airlock was. The smooth metal rings were designed to latch the pilot pod of the B-Wing, and allow it to fully attach itself. For in flight detachment, the airlock was modified to allow a small chute to competely seal the pod away from space, allowing the pilot to enter or exit, supposing there wasn't some type of malfunction.

"You know, I've been thinking, having this fighter on this planet, and being all that's happened in the past... do you think it's about time we left?" Dak's voice was bright, enthusiasm painted on his face as he waited for his friends to comment on his question, and his handiwork.

The Corellian disentangled herself from Mikal, and with the practiced movements of one used to being dizzy she strategically leaned against the starship with her left arm propped up, appearing as every bit as casual in the process as possible. There was no chance in hell that she could actually manage to stand by herself, let alone walk, while the entire world was busy spinning about and the floor rolling as it was. She had, on hindsight, had entirely too many Corellian ales.

Pasha sighed irritably as she tugged a pack of cigarra's from her black jacket's pocket and flicked her wrist upwards, pulling a single cigarra that had partially slid free out with her mouth. She quickly lit it and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke slowly as her eyes slid shut in relaxation. The former Captain of the Sonata of War took a few more slow drags before at last turning her attention to Dak, bright eyes of emerald clearer and more alert than they had been just seconds ago.

"If the airlock modifications to the Blue Otana are nearly completed, then yes," she paused, taking another slow drag from her cigarra. "However, we still have one more order of business we must attend to before leaving Coruscant. We need to go to the local Bureau of Trade, and get a license for the more respectable side to trading."

From Pasha's inflection on the word 'respectable', it was obvious she did not hold a high opinion of such things.

"We need a front for our operations should we ever encounter trouble, and we will. It'd be in my best interest if I was not the one to apply for the license, so it'll have to be either Mikal or you. Hopefully, before we leave Coruscant, I'll manage to find word of where the Sonata might be being kept."

Rolling his shoulders to banish the shadow-arm he still felt around them, Mikal moved to catch a better view of what Dak had done to the Blue Otana. The paint job hadn't been great to start with - white and the trademark blue - but Mikal imagined that Dak had marred it, somehow. Crossing his arms and scrutinizing the addition, Mikal couldn't help but be a little bit skeptical - even if they had all decided it was the best course of action. The Ion injector was far, far more important. If he found that Dak had skipped over reparing it properly, and it malfunctioned...

The injector didn't just affect the thrusters, it affected the cannons - and if the cannons weren't powered, or were overpowered, they were too close to the cockpit. It'd be the end of him. It was a thought that played on his nerves and worried him to no small extent. They'd just taken on this mechanic a few months ago; so far, no screwups, but that was just a couple months. Proved nothing.

Pasha's smoke caught his attention, and for a moment his throughts derailed. Patting his jacket pocket, he pulled out his own pack and lit up in a similar fashion. 'If this guy patched it up with duct-tape, paperclips, and used chewing gum, we're so fucked.'

"Don't mention me when you sign for it," he said absently to Dak, looking warily to the ship's forward mandibles, and the Ion Cannons attached just out of view, "I have a few violations, they wouldn't give it to you."

Dak narrowed his eyes, a grin lighting across his lips as they seemed to railroad him into going for a "trade liscence". While he was indeed willing to take on this most important of missions, he had absolutely no idea how or where to sign up for such a thing. Tapping his foot to himself he glanced at the Blue Otana, then over to his ship.

"Okay, so how exactly do I sign up for this trade liscence?" the young repairman asked, marvelling at how skilled he was in affixing the ship with the landing rings.

Dak glanced back up to them and absently wiped his hands on the front of his jumpsuit, contemplating what kind of clothing would be more appropriate. Most likely he would be standing in line for hours, everything on this blasted planet seemed to take a long time. Of course, thought Dak, that's probably due to the fact that everything in this place was one thing piled on top of something else, usually derelict. Too many people, too little room.

"Oh, yes, Mikal, I thought you'd like to know. I improved your ship's energy output by .38%, you were masterful in your set up and calibrations, just a few small corrections were needed to truly maximize drive effeciency, " Dak said, smiling in honest appreciation to the pilot of the Blue Otana.

Captain Ortho Gutt


Captain Ortho Gutt was glad to be off of his ship and in the fresh air of Imperial Center. The ISD Predator had come in for slight repairs much to the relief of he and his crew.

Their performance reviews were under par for the grating standards set by their Supreme Commander, Simon Kaine. He had enjoyed his tenure as Governor Elect of Garqi overseeing the supplying of the Outer Rim Imperial Fleet operations. At least, ensuring that such operations were well fed.

As he himself was.

A quite rotund man, he fancied himself a hunter and took on any challenge that would prove to others (as he already knew himself) that his prowess was unmatched.

He felt that the Imperial Training Surveyor had a personal dislike towards Ortho and that he had abused his privilege as a Surveyor by failing the Predator's crew and Ortho's command.

Rather than strip Ortho of his ship and leave him deskbound on Garqi, which he would not have minded as he was living like a king, the Imperial High Command reassigned Ortho to active duty as a starship captain. They made it his first order of business to whip his crew back into shape which he did mercilessly.

He was angry. His wife had left him when she saw his star falling from Imperial grace and ran off with half his accumulated wealth...and his Accountant. He no longer had servants caring for his every whim, no longer had mistresses pretending to love him...mistresses he could mistreat with impunity.

No. The galaxy hated Captain Gutt and so he made his way back to the Core leaving it to another up and coming Imperial political officer to replace him.

He tried to take as much of his wealth as he could, wealth accumulated from skimming from each purchase that fell under his oversight. Things would appear a little more expensive than they really were and he'd pocket the difference. Never alot of money for it to be a glaring figure on an auditor's report but even the little bits add up eventually.

He had just been getting used to the role when he was betrayed by a crew who did not perform to standards. Some of the crew had shared in his success with preferential treatment and first choices in quite a bit of things. Soon, duties became neglected and while performance reviews were hidden from the far off Imperial High command, it was only a matter of time before someone investigated.

His crew had gotten lazy.

Now he paid for their laziness by losing his prestigious position as Governor and now had to follow the same orders as any other starfleet captain.

He was relegated to boring banality.

And so he worked his crew and reworked them. They would have to meet his stringent (and sometimes unreasonable) standards and so with nothing short of tyranny, his lazy crew began the arduous attempt to 'tow their own weight' (as he put it).

One such demonstration had damaged the interior of the warship and so, being in Sector 00.00.00, they had turned toward the capital to put in for repairs.


While in the area, he tried to rebuild his old contacts in an effort to score more money. Even though his income had dropped, he was still used to the finer things in life.

His contacts, however, being shrewd businessmen themselves avoided Ortho. A response that irritated him to no end.

Well, he had shown them!

Enroute, during the training exercise that had damaged the ship, they came across a convoy bound for the Bastion Salvage Yards where most of the Imperial wreckage went after being scoured by engineers and Intelligences divisions enmasse.

The convoy consisted of discontinued ships and partial remains of perhaps vessels once famous. It was not the convoy itself that stirred his greed but the fact that what was being taken into salvage was from military seizures in caches hidden by a bureaucratic process constantly evolving and discarding concerns of the earlier generation. With the Rebellion ultimately crushed and ground into fine powder, who cared about their outdated and irrelevant material?

There were some caches still known to the government and so guarded but there were others that were simply dropping points or forgotten points like mechanichal galactic garbage dumps.

If Ortho could get his hands on such a cache, he might be able to sell items to the less fortunate on the black market for a tidy sum.

Fancying himself a businessman (which he wasn't), he felt he could use his rank to uncover these locations and profit from them.

Oh, his old business associates would want to talk to them then!

In fact, some had a noted curiosity towards his latest proposal and agreed to a meeting.

Oh, they'd beg to be a part of my operation! They'd beg to be a part of my grand designs!

And so here he was. Coruscant! Gem of the Empire, Jewel of the Galaxy, Seat of the Emperor and all that broo-ha.

A wry grin had curled Pasha's lips upon hearing Mikal's remark, tendrils of smoke spiraling away as she exhaled slowly. She had suspected the young man's record was already marred by illegal activities, though she had never outright asked him. They had a form of vague understanding to respect each other's privacy, as well as not ask too many questions about the past. The past belonged in just that, the past, as far as Pasha was concerned, and she for one did not need bitter memories getting drudged to the surface.

She had enough of those to last her two lifetimes.

The Corellian gave a sidelong glance to Mikal as he lit up a cigarra in similar fashion, a mirthful light sparking within her emerald eyes. She had never been an overly good role model for someone who had once held the rank of Captain within the New Republic, and even now in her latter years it seemed she would continue to be a bad influence upon others. When she had first met Mikal the young man had not smoked or drank a lick, and yet now here he was drunk and lighting up a cigarra with her.

Frankly, she felt it was an improvement. Mikal had given her the impression of an uptight individual, and the liquor and cigarra's had certainly helped to relax him, if only a little bit. The way he kept scrutinizing the forward mandibles of the Blue Otana she would have thought he half expected the entire starship to explode.

"It's really not that big a deal, Dak," Pasha replied with a slight slur, her gaze falling upon the technician. "The local office isn't all that far from here, from what I've gathered. They'll ask you several key questions, and quite possibly ask you to do a retina scan so they can process your identity through a databank to ascertain whether or not you would be a liability, per se."

She was of couse referring to the Bureau running a background check to see if he himself had any violations or warrants of arrest. Hopefully, Dak had been a good citizen up until now, as he seemed to believe he was.

"If everything goes smoothly, as I expect it to," and here she paused, taking another drag off her cigarra to give her time to properly align her muddled thoughts through the waning haze of inebriation, "we'll check the Intergalactic Stock Market to see what goods have the highest selling percentage on nearby planets, and what goods are cheapest to buy here on Coruscant."

Pasha may have sounded as though she knew exactly what she was talking about, but in truth she was spinning a mighty fine tale of pure bullshit.

"Myself and Mikal will escort you to the offices tomorrow, Dak," she continued, stifling back a yawn. "There's a cantina near the Bureau of Trade for Imperial officers. It certainly isn't my cup of Corellian ale, but it's the best place to scout for information in this district. I have an Imperial uniform from a year or two back - don't ask me how I got it - so I shouldn't have any problem getting in."

It was quite possibly the worst plan she had ever come up with, but she most certainly was not about to voice that.

"What do you say, Mikal? Ready to walk into the lion's den?"

“Nothing to it, really,” Mikal said, unsmiling, to Dak. “Got to know your ship.”

Mikal left the briefing of the poor mechanic to Pasha. It was routine information, and he didn't need to get involved with it. He had other things on his mind. The uneasiness that he'd been drinking in order to shake hadn’t left him; it was coming back gradually now, with this talk of permits and legal bullshit, but this time it had changed a little bit. He felt watched. Casting about with the edge of his eyes, so as not to excite the suspicions of those who watched, he caught Pasha’s gaze and focused on her for a few moments. He refocused on the shape that the cigarra smoke took when he breathed it out.

She wasn’t that bad a woman, Pasha - he certainly knew more of her than she did of him, though. After a few months trapped on the same ship with each other, things came out into the open, and a good number of lines had been drawn between them. Lines of war, entirely necessary. In this business, you only stuck close to your mates, and even then only loosely. Some smugglers had more honor than others. She’d proven trustworthy, though some secrets were worth keeping. Some secrets meant death.

Life for the past few months had been difficult, to say the least.

It was about then that he fell out of his musings and started truly listening to what Pasha was saying. What he heard surprised and alarmed him, so much that his eyes fixed on Pasha, searching her face more carefully than before. A weird glint came into his eyes, and he felt his stomach clench as a long forgotten voice echoed within his mind.

‘An officer is a leader. You will be asked to give your all for the men that you lead, and for the Empire that you serve. If you cannot stand up straight, cannot salute worth a damn, cannot press your uniform, cannot, as an officer, set an example - if you cannot even do these simple things, you are a disgrace to both.’

As the words resounded in his head, he considered Pasha‘s suggestion, and wondered where she had found the uniform she spoke of. His hand itched for his gun, but he touched his cigarra instead, inhaling deeply. When he removed it from his mouth and looked down on it, he noticed his hand was shaking. He steadied it, and focused on an indistinct point before him. He'd been careful, there was no need to worry about that.

“Whatever,” he replied, looking back to the Blue Otana’s fore and replacing his cigarra. Lion’s den indeed - If she truly knew the qualifications of an officer, she would not lightly joke about going into an officer’s club.