There Is No Crueler Tyranny: The Ogre's Watch (Invite Only)

[Bloodcrest]

Racuto Bloodcrest, former officer of the Corporate Sector Authority Security Division, maneuvered his small, two-person starfighter through the atmosphere of Nar Shaddaa. Avoiding the degenerate spires and bulky buildings as well as other traffic, Bloodcrest slipped his ship off the main traffic lane and onto a little used path through the poorer (if it was possible to be anything but on Nar Shaddaa) section. Inside the cockpit, a grim look had set itself upon Bloodcrest's face. He both loved and hated Nar Shaddaa at the same time. It offered plenty of opportunities for hiding and information gathering, but also presented the possibilities of those who help you hide or gather said information to turn on you and stab you in the back for a few credits. Somewhere, deep down...very deep down, a tiny part of Bloodcrest ached for the complex political and economic traps that corporations set for each other in the Corporate Sector. At one point, he'd have preferred them to a honest mugging by a creature that needed the credits simply to survive. Now of course, Bloodcrest had a few muggings, backstabs, murders, and other various crimes done simply to gain the credits for the next meal for Jean and himself. That had been WAY back when, before he had gotten good at flying his small ship.

Finally low enough in the dying city structure, Bloodcrest slowly maneuvered the ship to a small landing pad that hardly anyone knew existed. He had found it a few years ago and had tested it and another he had found beside it. Except for something as small and light as a single starfighter that was even small and light for its class, the landing pad would crumble under the weight. Bloodcrest had found that out easily...there was now only one pad. His best guess was that the landing pads were part of the original city structure, the gargantuan vertical spires that had given Nar Shaddaa its nickname as the "Vertical City" before the cityscape had slowly crawled out from the central spires to form the planet-wide city it was now. Having been passed over for who-knew-how-many-years in favor of the higher, better-maintained landing strips and docks. Most likely another reason it was abandoned was the fact that the original access to the higher levels had crumbled apart like most things at this level of the city. Bloodcrest cut the engines off and climbed out of the ship. He slipped into a liquid-resistant body suit and holstered his newly-acquired DC-17m Interchangeable Weapon System, courtesy of an unnamed corpse on Mastala. He walked over to a maintenance hatch and went through it, his feet splashing in the sewer water as he landed. If Nar Shaddaa smelled like sewer water topside, it was magnified tenfold in the actual sewer water. Bloodcrest had to fight down his gag reflex, it smelled worse than a hutt wrapped in leathery, burnt nerf. Nevertheless, he had done this six times now and somehow survived the other times, surely he could this time as well.

Bloodcrest lifted the acid rain drain cover and pulled himself out of the sewer. Three hours of climbing in the waste of who-knew how many species, Bloodcrest shed the liquid-resistant suit and dropped it back into the sewer. Thankfully, most of the smell went with it as he closed the cover back. Time to hit all his favorite information hotspots.

[Bloodcrest]

The man in the dark suit sat back in his comfortable chair and took another deep breath of his cigar. The man sat up and blew the smoke into Bloodcrest's face. "You come to me at this late hour and ask me to give you information." The man stood up and began walking around his expensive desk and around Bloodcrest. "Now, this information is, of course, no problem for me...but it could be...expensive." The man had circled Bloodcrest completely and was now standing beside his desk once more. "I am an honest working man. I have bills, taxes, and tariffs to pay...as well as bribes and so forth." The man leaned back, putting his hands on his desk. "So the real question here...is how much you want this information. I suggest an opening price of...ten thousand credits."

Bloodcrest quickly responded, not to let the man think he would ever consider actually paying that amount for the information. "Three thousand credits." And the game began.

The man in the dark suit smiled wolfishly before naming a counter-proposal. "Seven thousand."

Still too high, Bloodcrest shook his head and named another sum, "Five thousand."

This time the man didn't smile. This time the man in the dark suit made a motion with his hand and a still shape in the shadows of one of the dark corners of the office suddenly sprang into action. Bloodcrest found himself with a blaster to his back. "As I said before, I'm an honest man. Seven thousand is my...final offer. Of course, I deal in information and I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to know you're here, aren't there?"

The man just crossed the line. Now he would be a threat. Bloodcrest's only line of action was now clear. It had happened before, one of his sources getting too big an ego. He had let the first one live...and he had paid dearly for it. That one being managed to sell out three other of his sources as well as put the Imperials and the bounty hunters onto his trail for the ten months it took for him to circle around and kill the thing. What was it about the little men that thought they should try and muscle into business they had no right to be in? So of course, with Jean's life on the line because he could care less about his own, Bloodcrest either had to teach the man a lesson...or kill him.

Bloodcrest whipped around and shot the man behind him in the chest with a full power shot from his DC-17m, spun around, kicked the man in the dark suit onto the ground, walked over and put the barrel of the DC-17m pointed straight up the man's right nostril. He put as much menace and threat into his voice as he could. "Now here's my final offer. I will pay you four thousand credits. You will get me the information I need or the means to get the information I need should it be beyond your meager skills of information gathering. Before I leave, you and I will go through all your information files and eliminate all references to me. After our deal is complete, I will walk out of this office and, if you're still alive, you'll never see me again because after I leave, the next time I see you, I'll let my blaster scratch that itch you seem to have up your nose." Bloodcrest paused for dramatic effect and to allow all that to leak through the man's thick skull. "Got it?"

The man's suit was now soiled and he was trembling, but he managed a small whimper of an affirmative. Bloodcrest and the man, Bloodcrest's blaster offhandedly pointed at the base of the man's skull, spent the next few hours purging the man's database.

[Bloodcrest]

Racuto Bloodcrest stripped the replacement wet suit after he climbed out of the sewer once more. Nar Shaddaa had given him much information, but now he had a goal and it was time to leave. As he walked towards the ship, Bloodcrest noticed that Jean was no longer in the cockpit, having obviously healed from her injuries, she was now poking and jabbing with her hydrospanner at different parts of the ship. Bloodcrest could feel the tirade before she even began. "Look what you've done to my precious ship! I can't believe you even made it on the planet in one piece! What the heck is the matter with you?" Jean walked up to Bloodcrest and smacked him in the head with her hydrospanner. There was only one person in the entire galaxy that Bloodcrest would allow to hit him in the head with a hydrospanner...and she had just done so.

Bloodcrest waved her off. "Yeah yeah. So fix the ship and be done with it. We have a month to hang around here and then we'll have to leave." Bloodcrest didn't mention the additional credits he had gotten off of the information broker after he had been forced to kill him. That should get them enough parts to fix whatever Jean needed or wanted to fix. And then, after the month was up and they were on schedule, they'd leave Nar Shaddaa and begin the second long step towards getting the Ogre's Chrono back into Bloodcrest hands.

[Bloodcrest]

Bloodcrest walked awkwardly through the empty halls of the abandoned Imperial outpost. In the middle of a once-mineral-rich asteroid belt near an unstable star with no planets to speak of and no civilization anywhere within several parsecs, a single abandoned Imperial mining outpost remained lifeless, bulky, and with a single computer core containing information Racuto Bloodcrest was willing to walk in a spacesuit through endless halls to find. He had three more hours before his air ran out and as he judged it, it would take him one to get back out.

Normally, Imperials never would have wasted the resources present in the refinery, but in this case they hadn't had much choice. When the pirates attacked and the communications suddenly ceased, no one took notice. The pirate came, they killed, they stole, and they left. The station had been silently sitting in space since, airless thanks to a huge gash created by an explosion when one of the pirate ships kamikazed into the station. The result was that Racuto had been forced to climb over and on occasion through many dead bodies burned to a crisp from exposure to the fluctuating cosmic radiation coming off the nearby star.

Racuto shined the light in his hand at a solid durasteel door that was sealed shut. Behind it lay his objective.

[Bloodcrest]

The room was entirely dark and filled with the kind of silence you can only find in a vacuum. With the door shut, it was an empty space where nothing existed, time did not pass, and reality bent into twisted shapes and images. It was the kind of place one might find as they crossed the event horizon of a black hole. The normal laws of physics and thermodynamics seemed to be absent...

And then the door was violently annihilated in a blossom of fire and rapid corrosion and the space, being viewed by Racuto Bloodcrest, became just the same as any other space anywhere else in the universe. Still mostly empty, and still deathly silent, the room that held something precious to Racuto became one more place he had been. Racuto took a few ginger steps into the now smoke-filled room. The structure held, and he began putting his full weight behind each step. He sifted through some of the wreckage until he found the sealed compartment where the computer core was held and, he hoped, still intact. He took a small hammer he had brought with him and cracked the protective cover open like an egg, the fragile computer core floating out in recoil. With utmost care, Racuto placed the core into a carefully insulated carrying case and began making his way out of the space station.


With care and genius, Jean's bare hands moved across the smooth surface of the exposed computer core. The Corporate Sector's legacy once again became one of Racuto's greatest assets. Implanted in the skin of Jean's hands was a highly sophisticated electronic system that could access information systems directly, allowing Jean, through the use of a complementary neural interface, access the information in a practical manner. The drawback to the implant was that Jean had to be in direct physical contact for it to work. That meant that to get any information from a computer through the use of the implant, she had to be touching it, something generally impossible as the object to be accessed is usually connected and heavily protected. But in the case of the small, detached sphere computer core, direct physical contact was possible, easy, and preferable.

"I got it." Jean said as she smiled. Racuto heard her begin to type the information onto her screen so that he could see. He smiled. They now had the where and the how, but they still lacked the man power.

As Jean plotted the hyperspace course to an inhabited planet, Racuto recorded the message that would be sent as soon as they got there.

"Hey Kazaar, got some interesting misbehavior planned, you interested? If so, meet me at the following coordinates." Racuto entered in the coordinates of one of the shadowports he used very occasionally. Kazaar might or might not know about the place, but it didn't matter so long as no one else got the message. To be careful though, Racuto had Jean write up an encryption from scratch as soon as they entered hyperspace...just in case.

[Aurelias Kazaar]

Coruscant

"Dammit BC," Kazaar cursed as he read the encrypted text, "Why can't ya just use Basic like everyone else...

"Or put it in something like Huttese...no one frackin' learns that these days."

He took a puff from his dark cigar, giving a small glare at Estelle as she reminded him 'Trey' (his R7 droid) could easily de-crypt it with little trouble.

"That ain't th'point, Kid," another puff from the cigar, "BC should know how much I hate technology...and computers."

Estelle patiently folded her arms over her damp T-Shirt and shook her head.

They'd just come from a run around 'The Works', a place where not many people took th'time t'get to know. But 'The Kid' did know more 'bout than a 'normal' debutente would (a credit t'either her father or a youth filled with more than a few nights of sneakin' out) so the run turned into more of a way t'test her observation skills.

"You could, you know, learn more about them," she gave a semi-sly smile, "The university does give basic computer cour-"

Kazaar's eyes flashed, "I know how t'fracking operate computers, Kid. And I ain't going t'school either. Never was the school goin' type.

"'Sides...always different ways t'learn. Ya oughta know that."

Estelle nodded in agreement.

"I think Zadge should have a shot at this. It might keep him from getting scared whenever he sees you."

Kazaar snorted.

"I ain't that bad, Kid. But you're right. Contact Specks...if he don't wanna do it 'Trey' can."

[Zadge Talran]

Zadge Talran had been on level twelve of Zombie Wars: Clan Discension when one Estelle Russard interupted him. The beeping of his com startled the man enough to cause him to drop his controller, which in turn led to the loss of his last life. Zadge shook his head sadly as he watched his player being devoured on screen, it's pale limbs (eerily akin to his own complexion) waving about helplessly. It had taken him six hours to get this far and now it was all shot to hell.

However a few moments later the game was forgotten.

If there was one thing that Zadge loved more than hologames, it was codes. As a young boy Zadge had devised basic encryptions for notes (which were, pathetically, most often written to himself by himself) in an attempt to make his older brothers feel stupid. It had not worked, had in fact only ensured fiercer wedgies and Corellian torture rubs, but the man had hit on an interest which later developed into passion.

So it was with great interest that the bespeckled Talran recieved the transmission on a secured line. He stared at the string of numbers, then picked up his comm and called Estelle back. "Is this it?" There was something between dissapointment and offense in his voice.

"That's it."

Zadge scoffed. "Geepers, this is just a simple monoalphabetic substitution, I could do this in my sleep. All you gotta do is..." As he hammered away at his computer Zadge's furrowed brow drew together tightly. Contrary to what he'd expected--which was a nice, neat little message--all he'd gotten was another string of ciphered text.

eairogiolfhteteofdteenuyenlriaesmnteeneot
gazkestndocnwloetamemsiesrtiodnapovhbigisrtimsoraa yh

"Er... I'll get back to you." Zadge closed the connection and, with a crack of his knuckles, tucked into the encryption.

Whoever had scrambled it had reverted back to classic means, using a method developed by historical warriors which involved staggering the text between rows. The rows read sequentially gave him yet another bunch of jibberish, but Zadge quickly recognized it as a basic reverse cipher, meant to be read right to left. He typed the reversed text into a matrix on his computer and after a few failed attempts found the keyword (poodoo, which caused a juvenile giggle to scuttle out) and was able to determine the alphabetical sequence. It was then just a few seconds work to get the original message.

Zadge leaned back in his chair, popping his neck in satisfaction. With a smirk the man picked his comm up again and punched in the proper contact number. He as practically gloating, his eyes haughty behind his thick glasses; Zadge was about to open a celebratory beer when Kazaar answered unexpectantly (Zadge preferred to talk to Estelle because she was less likely to get impatient and threaten him with bodily harm).

Sitting straighter in his chair, as if the burly Rebel was present, Zadge found himself stammering. It was a weird speech impediment, one which cropped up around large, intimidating sentients for some odd reason that the twerpy, stringy, pale-skinned Zadge couldn't fathom. "Uh... I-I got the c-cleartext. Bunch of co-co-coordinates and um, a message."

[Aurelias Kazaar]

Kazaar gave a smirk and took a puff from his cigar. Briefly, he shot a glare off camera, probably t'Estelle who had a look of triumph on her face.

"Nice work, Specks. Bring it over here. I wanna take a look at it."

He saw Zadge's eyes widened just a bit and the smirk got larger. There was also a bit offa evil glint in Kazaar's black eyes.

"Now, Specks. I ain't gonna frackin' wait all day."

The connection closed.

The Rebel Agent turned to 'The Kid'.

"Well...looks like he's good f'something after all. We're taking him on whatever BC wants us t'do by th'way. Might get some sun on his face too."

[Zadge Talran]

Zadge sort of though of Kazaar as a terrorist; when he said 'jump', you said 'how high please don't hurt me oh God oh God'. The man took a few minutes to download his work onto a portable drive (it was a sleek tiny thing, one of the perks of being in with the Rebel party on semi-official terms), and pull a jacket on. Before leaving he paused to look in the dirty bathroom mirror; he contemplated combing the towheaded mop of brown hair on his head, but reasoned that since it was just going to be mussed within a few minutes there was no point.

A half hour later and Zadge was walking down a corridor towards a directed office. The man's face was flushed and he was panting slightly, which indicated that he had taken the directive to come 'now' literally. Never athletic, any pace faster than a brisk clip was rejected whole-heartedly by his lank frame.

Determined not to be cowed by Kazaar, Zadge forced himself to relax and pull his shoulders back before entering the room. His heart still sped up in beat--how could it not? These were the two who had taken him hostage and interrogated him for Endors sake--but the man managed notably to appear in the calm.

"Here we go." Zadge tossed the drive onto a stack of papers in the centre of the table. He pressed his glasses up and eyed Aurelias. "You know, there are basic encryption courses offered at the University..."

[Aurelias Kazaar]

Kazaar shot him a look he normally saved f'Rodians, Lizardheads, and Mirko Spendrim.

"Shaddup Specks. I know how t'decode stuff but not like that.

"'Sides..." he took a puff from his cigar, "As I told 'er...I ain't th'school goin' type. Never was...never frackin' will be."

The former bounty hunter motioned for him t'take a seat and Specks did. It took him a couple seconds t'read the whole message and when he finished there was a large smirk on his face.

BC was callin' in his favor.

"So, Specks...wanna go onna mission."

It wasn't a question.

[Zadge Talran]

"... Uh, see, I have to uh, help... feed children. Poor children. Really poor, dirty, orphaned children." Zadge stammered. He knew that one place he most certainly did not want to be was in any confined quarters with Kazaar--especially a ship, where there were airlocks.

However the eyeballed look Kazaar gave him shot down any and allexcuses that were brewing. Zadge nodded. "Yeah. Sounds like a blast."

Blast to the head, was more likely.

[Bloodcrest]

OOC: Well here's a reply that's been a while in the coming. Those who need to know why know why.

IC: Kazaar was coming.
That much was obvious. Who he was bringing was another matter altogether.

Racuto craned his neck to speak to Jean, "You're still on friendly terms with Administrator Karr, right?" Administrator Kard was the absolute authority of the quasi-Imperial planet of Mard-Sharo VIII. The planet had once been highly populated, but a virus had devastated the population two decades ago and the survivors had been forced to adapt their lifestyles to more rudimentary nomadic roaming. The last bastion of civilization was an enclosed city called Maail by official charts and the Old Capital by anyone who had ever been on the planet. Before the outbreak of the virus, the planet had been a half-hearted supporter of the Empire, but as many suspected the virus was actually a weapon test of an Imperial biological weapon, the planet and most of its files had been "accidentally misplaced." In truth, the Imperials hadn't even waited around to see if anyone survived after the virus wiped out 99% of the population in a single week. As far as the Imperials knew, the planet was dead. As far as anyone but a select few knew, the planet was dead. The planet was so far off normal hyperspace routes, there was only the occasional miscalculation that landed a ship or two in the system per decade.

Racuto and Jean qualified as one of the ships that had stumbled across the planet when Racuto had smashed the navigation display with his head during a brief firefight with a few pirates. Jumping into hyperspace to avoid being blasted into tiny particles of microscopic matter by the vastly superior pirate forces, Racuto and Jean, upon further review of their course in retrospect, has almost jumped through the gravity-well of the Mard-Sharo star. As much as that would have killed them outright, Racuto would have perferred going through the star than suffering the earful he got from Jean. He couldn't hear properly for the following week.

Upon limping to the only planet in the system that was giving any signs of civilization, Racuto and Jean followed an old Imperial automatic traffic buoy to the surface of the planet where they were instructed to land in the only landing bay left operational in Old Capital. There they were greeted by a mismatched squad of Old Capital guards, what passed for the Administrator's police, wearing out-of-date stormtrooper armor that had been left by the Imperials. They had been force-marched at gun-point around the perimeter of the city three times before they were taken to the Silver Palace, a smaller, less expensive and less opulent version of the Emperor's Palace on Coruscant. There they were introduced to the son of the planet's last Imperial nobleman, Lucian Kard. Lucian Kard, Administrator Kard to Racuto and Jean and Emperor Kard to everyone else, ruled the city-state of Old Capital with a near-iron-fist philosophy. The man was, in Racuto's opinion, arrogant, stupid, small-minded, and incredibly oblivious to the fact that his second-in-command, Cassio Relouve, was the practical, charismatic, intelligent man who was REALLY in charge of the planet as per public opinion.
As Cassio had pointed out to Racuto during his and Jean's extended stay, there were many advantages to be had from allowing Kard to think he ruled the planet. First, if the Imperials ever came back, he could blame it all on Kard. Second, any assassination attempts would be directed at Kard first. Third, and final, Cassio was the son of a second-rate engineer who had managed to get his son into some of the best pre-virus academies on the planet and therefore, by law of the planet, could not hold the highest seat of power in the planetary government as he was not of 'noble' birth.

By consequence of his stupidity, Kard had fallen hopelessly in love with Jean. "Oh...I just wanted to voice my opinion one more time on this mission. You suck. I swear I won't talk to you for a month for this. Don't ask me for any favors any time soon." Racuto smiled and then chuckled a little at Jean's expense. "I mean it! The guy's an idiot, he's arrogant, he's not even handsome. I hate having to pretend to fawn all over him."

Jean not talking to him for a month didn't sound all that bad to Racuto. Women...once we get our ship, then she'll at least have something to busy herself with, but until then.... While Jean distracted Kard, Racuto would talk to Cassio about getting some help from Cassio's small navy. Somewhere along the lines, Cassio had gotten a hold of an Imperial frigate. From there, he had sent his most trusted commanders to 'acquire' more ships in any way they felt necessary as long as they didn't lead anyone back to the planet. Unknown to many of the planets in the sector, the many pirate bands that attack and then retreated and then attacked and then retreated, maybe stole a few ships here and there were really all part of the Mard-Sharo Navy. All-in-all, the small fleet consisted of one light cruiser, three frigates, a large cargo ship modified to act as a carrier, and nearly twenty one- and two-manned fighters of various make and design.

Of that force, Racuto had in mind to ask Cassio that he send a single frigate to serve as a distraction while he and a team that had yet to come together infiltrated the Corporate Sector Authority research facility and steal the Ogre's Watch.

Racuto landed his ship in the same landing bay he had two years ago, the last time he had been there.

[Diamond Roa]

I am Rosethorn. I have done many things in my life, some I am proud of, others I am not. When I was a child, I grew up on Corellia and as with most Corellians, I learned how to fly pretty early. The first lesson I learned on the streets of Corellia was to never trust anyone. The second lesson I learned was that you have to look out for yourself first and others second. The third lesson I learned, and perhaps the most important, never stay in one place for too long. I have always had enemies and they have always looked for me. Some enemies will only follow you as far as the next street before they lose interest, but others will follow you across time and space. Those kinds of enemies will follow you clear from one side of the galaxy to the other simply to kill you. The solution is to always keep moving. If you find a good hiding place, take it, secure it, move on...and maybe reuse it every once in a while, but never twice in a row and never on any kind of consistant basis. There is a saying my enemies like to practice. If your prey goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. I have lost a lot of friends that way, even a family once...

How I wished I had stumbled across my greatest hiding place before...maybe then I could have saved my wife...my daughter...my brother...my son.

When I was on Corellia, my name was Justic, the name I was born with. On Coruscant, I took the name Raven. I've had many names. When I found my Haven, my Paradise, I took the name Diamond Roa. Whenever I leave my Sanctuary, my name is Rosethorn.

I was in my Sanctuary, had been hiding for two months from a killer named Ithiel Malchiel, a man after my own heart...literally, when I met the only man I would ever call Friend. He was the only man who would ever know my true name, the name I whispered during those quiet moment in hyperspace, cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

"Hello Friend!" I said as I walked into the landing bay. I smiled and grabbed my Friend in a warm embrace as he jumped down on the pavement from his ship. Behind him, I saw the Lady climbing out of the ship as well. "What brings you to my Sanctuary on this lovely day?" The two of us began to walk towards the door of the landing bay, the Lady trailing behind, sulking for some reason.

"Hey, Diamond. I've got a bit of business to attend to with Cassio and the Administrator. Maybe you'd be interested in swapping stories over a few drinks as soon as I'm done talking to Cassio?" Racuto Bloodcrest flashed me a grin that told me he had some particularly interesting stories to tell and some equally serious business to attend to with the President and the Emperor. Of course, I knew that his real business was with the President...I considered the Emperor barely worthy of the title "sentient lifeform."

"Very well Friend. I will meet you at the Dark Bar, fifth seat. You bring the red, I'll bring the white." With that, I turned and walked down the corridor going the opposite direction. I returned to my Inner Sanctum. My Inner Sanctum is something of a curiosity for most people who venture into it. From the outside, it appears to be any other room in one of the residential areas of the Old Capital. Once inside, one realizes that where I wall should be to provide a small but suitable living quarters is in fact another gateway into a larger room filled with devices whose nature even eludes me...and I made them. Curse the Corporate Sector Authority and what they did to me...what they made me.

I walked over to a small chamber in the center of the room. I pressed a button and listened to the satisfying sound of the small pressure lock doors opening and the whir of motors as a tray slid out of the supercooled recessed of the chamber. I spoke softly, my voice filled with awe and reverence, "Father...are you awake Father?"

The voice, coming from every corner of the room whispered. If anyone had been listening to the voice anywhere else in the room, they could not have heard it, but I sat at the precisely calculated spot where the soundwaves from six separate speakers met to form a single stereo effect singular to the meeting place of the waves. "I am here. What can I do for you Rosethorn?" Father's voice was sweet and smooth, like honey in my ears.

"How do the stars fare?" The question was one Father knew. The answer was one I hoped for and expected.

"The stars are quiet, lonely, and altogether boring to talk to."

Father was perhaps my greatest invention. The idea came from your basic droid. A droid has a sentient intelligence that is programmed into its core and is designed to usually do one thing. An assassin droid could kill other sentient beings, a cleaning droid cleaned, a protocol droid translated, an astromech repaired starships, and a navigational droid brain calculated the precise routes between stars. I believed this to be a cursed existance. Except under rare circumstances, a protocol droid could not become a warrior, an astromech could not become a hero, an assassin droid could not be a peaceful protestor to a tyrannical regime. The limitations were obvious to me. It lay in the fundamental programming of the artificial intelligence. Every droid worked off the same basic programming language and protocols that had been handed down from era to era only occasionally built upon.

Father was something new. When I made Father, I broke the chain and freed him from the bounds of careful programming. I made Father to be able to adapt to whatever was within his capabilities. I gave Father the ability to change himself if he so wished. Above all, I gave Father the ability to do what every other form of sentient life inherently has the ability to do. I gave Father the ability to make choices for himself. I also gave him one last gift. It was something that most sentients did NOT inherently have. I gave Father the ability to calculate and accurately weigh the consequences of his actions.

Father was my one great success. Everything else I touched did not work or if it did, I did not know how or why. Aside from staying alive, staying hidden. I had no other purpose in life. Well, I take that back. I always shared a nice glass of red wine with my Friend at the Dark Bar. So far I had stayed alive.

[Bloodcrest]

Diamond Roa was indeed a strange fellow. From what Racuto knew, the man was a technological genius, but he was also crazy. Back when Racuto had been part of the Corporate Sector Authority, he had read the man's file. Diamond Roa had grown up on Corellia, was captured by discreet slavers, taken to the Corporate Sector, changed hands a few times, ended up in the CSA project to chemically enhance the human psyche, and was one of the poor survivors because of it. The project had been a success...too much of one in fact. The participates in the project all became highly intelligent, some of them from being just above idiotic. But there had been a problem. The system shock of their newfound intelligence had led most of them to commit suicide or go insane. Those that went insane were locked up, but a few got away. By the time they had tracked him, Diamond Roa had already made his way to the home the CSA had provided for him and the wife he had met while in the project and the children they had had, and the brother that had sought him out from Corellia. By the time the Security Division got there, all they could do was clean up the mess. Of course, the CSA hadn't stopped there at all. Learning from a few of their mistakes, the CSA went after people with naturally higher intelligence...Jean was their star student.

For a few years, Racuto hadn't thought a single thought about the project Diamond Roa had been a part of...until he had stopped by Mard-Sharo one year to find that Diamond Roa had moved there and had taken up residence. From that point on, he had Cassio keep an eye on him, not let him have too much social interaction, kept him mostly isolated, but still gave him a comfortable sense of freedom. Whenever Racuto managed to get out to Mard-Sharo, he would go to a local bar with Diamond and take a bottle of red wine with him. Once at the bar, Diamond would pour him a glass of a decent white wine and Racuto would pour Diamond a glass of whatever red wine was available. It was a ritual that Jean told Racuto had something to do with the experiments the CSA had done to Diamond and that to fail to do so might just unhinge what little sanity Diamond had left.

Racuto walked a little faster towards the Audience Hall at the thought of Diamond Roa going crazy. After all, he had been one of the academy recruits sent to clean up the mess the Security Division didn't want anything to do with.

[Bloodcrest]

Racuto came out of the Audience Hall, Jean did not. Jean was being politely taken to a dinner party that Racuto was sure would be a mockery of the parties once held by the Imperial nobles. Racuto on the other hand would be joining Diamond Roa at the bar for a quiet drink before going on to meet Cassio so that they could plan out the distraction one of his pirate ships would create while Racuto and a team infiltrated the research center.

Racuto hated politics, but it was something he had a mild talent for. Thankfully, with Cassio it wasn't politics as much as it was business. Business sense came naturally to most people born and educated in the Corporate Sector because in the Corporate Sector, business was the prominent way of life. In return for helping him on his mission, Cassio would be well paid. Racuto had many things to offer a man such as Cassio and there were certain sources of information that Cassio's pirate fleet could assuredly benefit from. In the Audience Hall, they had made some frivolous offers. The "Emperor" himself even asked for Jean's hand in marriage in exchange for the help of the fleet but it was of course an offer Racuto considered for the moment it took Jean to send a look that could kill in his direction before both Racuto and Cassio chose to ignore the offer. After a few more minutes of polite negotiations, Cassio presented a classical step by asking for more time to think on the matter. Translated into business language, that meant, "We'll talk about this somewhere away from women and fools."