Shadow of the Crimson Turtle

"Well the ship was registered as the Covenant , and it came through from the Bakura system. Annnnd that's about all we've got. Maybe with our techy friend here we can pull up some info based on that. For now though, we've got a date with this guy Cardell, a friend of my boss. Wants us to meet him at," he double checks his compad. "... Spoons? Guessing that's some kinda cantina. He should be able to get us a place while we're here though. If everyone's ready then lets get moving!" he turns to walk off, head tilting back down as he searches the net for the address to Spoons.

'Spoons', or rather S.P. Oon's Bar and Grill , as it turns out, is a cantina on the lower levels of the port-pier promenade run by a weathered-looking old Bith by the name of Oon. Oon is, much to his own chagrin, affectionately known as "Spoono" by his clientele, who mostly consist of the station's working class and chittering groups of the system's native sentient species, 'Ewoks'. When the group arrive, Ceph quickly spots Cardell, who is sat at the bar in a navy-blue tracksuit, wearing a sort of soft cap with a rounded crown and a stiff peak projecting in front. He's a pale-skinned human with short cropped blonde hair and unusually large ears. He's nursing a tall, broad glass of a golden, carbonated beverage.

Nils mentally evaluated his options. Kill all the force users He felt a primal urge from deep within his digital DNA to eliminate the nearby force users, but practically though it seemed more likely that attempting to do so would more likely result in his own death. His creators had, in a surprisingly sensible move, decided he had no need for instruction in ways to kill people. And given the contents of his bag, this would be an exceptionally inconvenient time to die. Run away Given how suspicious the Draethos had seemed of him, there was a lot to be said for this option. But it also sounded like the Drathos was a bit out of touch with events, so it was possible he was overestimating the danger there. Besides, if the J's were after him, it might actually be a good long-term strategy to befriend some force-users. Accept Ceph's offer It might not be podracing, but the whole situation (the explosion, the shadowy figure, the detective looking into the case) did seem to have a drama-ish quality to it which reminded him of the shows he'd streamed on quiet days. Plus he could earn some credits! Once Ceph has finished talking to the port authority employee, Nils gives Ceph his best attempt at a smile (he'd been led to believe organics liked those) and says, "Sounds like fun, let me know what you need done and we can maybe talk credits, hey?"

Trying to ignore the akward smile of Nils, Leb follows Ceph into the cantina. 

"Cardell! Good to see you!" Ceph announces as he strolls into the divey cantina. His skin naturally adjusts to the ambient light becoming darker and duller. "How's life treatin ya?" Whenever Oon comes by, Ceph will order a glass of whatever Cardell is having.

"A'ight, Cepho," Cardell replies, standing and grasping Ceph's hand while he claps him around the back with the other. "Call me Lad mate, everyone does. Your boss said you needin' somewhere to crash, while you check out that business down by the docks. What's tha' all 'bout then? 'An who are this lot?"

A large, brusque man sits next to Cardell, facing toward the bar. His hair and beard are shaggy and unkept, and his clothes somehow seem to be an afterthought despite being kept under a protective vest - the likes of which seems to be a second-hand piece saved from any major damage by its former owner. Laid out before him is a long-stemmed glass, two short little shot glasses, and an empty glass mug. His hand clenches a second half-full mug when he leans over to Cardell. "Told you he had weird friends. Spied'em from the street, couple of puffy types - clergy, Jedi, or upper-crust - and someone who looked so lost in the sauce he couldn't find the ground under his feet." Cardell gives a little push on the man's shoulder to take back some personal space.

Ceph shoots the stranger an annoyed glance. "That's right. So far we don't know much. Came in from the Bakura system," Ceph shrugs, indicating that's the end of their intel. "These guys are helping me investigate it. This is Sovia, Lebenha, and Nils. Who's your weird friend here?" he gestures to Lad's companion without looking at the man.

"This 'ere's me associate Derrab, innit?" Lad replies, glugging at his drink, as Oon deposits a fresh glass in front of Ceph. "'E's gonna watch your backs. Make sure no muggins caps you, while you're askin' questions. Y'feel me?"

"Shoot'em before they shoot you, and put your pieces back on before you get back. Maybe not in the same order, but close enough." Derrab gives a little self-satisfied smirk at the last bit.

"I... I am not sure... " says Lebenha a little bit insecure about all this. The man seems the kind of shooting first and ask later, and has something that make her nervous. 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” he says to Lebenha, trying to be reassuring but without much conviction. “An extra gun can’t hurt, neither can a medic on the team. Glad to have ya, Derrab.” His head shifts back towards Lad. “So let’s see these digs. If we’re gonna get ahead of this shit we gotta get a move on.” Ceph picks up his glass and gulps it down, draining half the cup in the matter of a couple seconds.

"And another mechanic may well prove useful," whispers Nils to Lebenha, evidently not quite managing to pierce Lad and Derrab's accents. He holds out a hand in greeting. "Pleased to meet you, Friend Derrab!"

"Got you summit nice in the upper city," Lad replies, sliding a keycard across the bar to Ceph. "Owner's on a business trip, don't stay too long," he adds with a collaborative wink.

Sovia has been stood close behind Lebenha, unable to pay much attention to the conversation as she has been locked in a silent battle with herself, in mental agony she has been trying to shut out the flood a base emotions, lust, hate and anger, flowing around the cantina. Such violence and hatred as to make her stomach turn. Finally she manages to shut most of it out and steady herself, apparently winning the mental battle.  "Our thanks friend. We will not outstay our welcome."

Derrab gives Nils' hand a shake, noticing the damaged coat sleeve, "That a new addition to the coat?"

"Yes!"

Lebenha, sensing the struggle of Sovia reaches her through the Force and send to her a feeling of calmness and focus. "Calm, breathe, focus..." she sent towards Sovia, trying to help her.

In the chaos and torture of the flood of emotions she is sensing, Sovia reaches out and latches on to the calm presence she feels forcing its way into her mind. Using it as an anchor she slowly shuts out everything else, one by one. Thank you. She rests a hand on Lebenha's shoulder in gratitude to the Jedi. 

The journey to the upper city takes about half an hour. Judging by the alpha-numeric address code on the keycard that Ceph received from Cardell, the apartment is on the higher levels of this same district. A fortunate turn of events, since it saves traversing the vast station's central nexus. A quick swipe of the card at a nearby turbolift unlocks access to upper levels never seen by the station's less privileged denizens. Once the turbolift reaches its destination, the ragtag group is greeted by pristine silver bulkheads and polished tile floors. The room is large and oval, with doors to the left and right. In the middle, directly opposite the turbolift, sits a Gran doorman behind a security desk. He eyes the unusual looking selection of individuals critically. "Can I help you?" He asks.

"Yes actually, we're guests of one of the residents here and will be staying for a few days." Ceph says in his most cordial tone while approaching the desk and gingerly holding out the keycard. 

The Gran eyes Ceph carefully and scans the keycard. He seems almost disappointed when it checks out. "On your left, number 223. Please pass my compliments on to Mr. Borrego."  He snivels. As the party leaves, Ceph and Nils spot him picking up his compad to make a call. The apartment itself branches off of a broad ring of several residences around the edge of the tower. It's a luxurious penthouse-type arrangement, with several bedrooms and a stunning view over the twinkling lights of the port pier.

"Nice spot. Almost wish it were a bit slummier, we're out of place." he glances at Derrab, the grungiest member of their troupe. "Betcha he was calling the actual owner. We should be quick about this." Ceph walks to the first bedroom he finds and tosses his cloak and pack onto the bed. He strolls to the kitchen and finds a bottle of something effervescent in the fridge and pours himself a glass before sitting down on the sofa. His exposed skin blends in even better without the cloak, and his torso almost melts into the red upholstery. "So. What do we know? The ship was called the Covenant and it came in from the Bakura system. But what motive would someone have for this? Clearly they have something against RBS. Almost seems like they wanna incite anger against the corporation. What would anyone have to gain from that though? Could it be someone working with the J-droids?"

"The speech sounded more like resentement to me that plotting" says Lebenha sitting in a chair and looking over the transteel window. "Would it be a smaller station I wuld dare to ask the administrator for a list of employees or ex-employees that could have something against the company, but here... the list could take us three decades to check..."  She thinks for a moment "I think we should focus on the explosive. That is something that not everyone could have access to. We cannot be sure if the bomb was planted here or back in Bakura... do we know something about the transmission? Was it broadcasted from inside the station or it was recorded and displayed remotely or perhas timed with the explosion? " 

Nils tries to avoid eye-contact as Ceph mentions of the possibility of someone working with the J. "Well, so I was always told that RBS were a bunch of money-grabbing backstabbing bastards, so maybe it's not surprising that spooky guy on the screen has a motive against them. You don't think he made some good points?" Looking around the room, he picks up a small remote control from an immaculately clean side-table. He inspects it for a second, as if he's forgotten how a remote works, then presses the 'Power' button. Silently, a vidscreen slides up across one of the walls and turns on, the muted image showing some burly-looking aliens throwing an irregularly-shaped ball to each other in a stadium on an RBS ship somewhere. Nils inspects the remote again and begins rapidly flicking channels, almost faster than the others can follow, looking for any mention of the explosion on the HoloNet News. With one eye on the screen, he continues, "So motive, seems pretty obvious. But means, that could be a start. I can try and find out what I can about the signal - encodings, metadata, if they got sloppy, we might be in luck. Transmission source might be harder to trace, but it could be a good lead. And the ship - if we could find crew manifests, owner registrations, we might find some people to talk to. A cargo manifest, maybe the bomb was hidden in a piece of cargo. And I don't know anything about the Bakura system, maybe it's irrelevant, maybe not, we should find out about it though, hey? You want me to start on some of that?"

Sovia watches the exchange with slight embarrassment, eventually, feeling too uncomfortable as a spare part she interject,  "I am afraid I am a little out of my depth here. I know almost all words that were said, but your meaning escapes me. I still do not really know what has happened in the galaxy for centuries or who RBS is, who J is, or who now leads Republic space. Perhaps I should make something for everyone to eat and somebody could explain when they have a chance." She looks around the apartment for some food or other supplies and somewhere to prepare a meal. 

The apartment's kitchen is open plan with the main living space. It sits on the left side of the room when one faces the arcing transparisteel outer wall that runs ceiling to floor for the entire breadth of the room. The division is marked by a black-tiled area of flooring, with a small island on the edge opposite the counters. It doesn't take Sovia long to find cupboards and a fridge full of food. There's a sleek black heating surface against the wall. It all looks very modern and state of the art. The large vidscreen that Nils has activated is situated on the same wall as the door the group came in through, directly opposite the huge curved window. Several news channels are reporting on the incident, but all from outside the hangar and with very little solid information to go on. Only RBS's official news organisation, the SBBC, has reporters close to the action. All are denouncing the attack as cowardly and heinous. Apparently, a group calling themselves the ' Grey Dawn ' have claimed responsibility for the attack, but so far nobody seems to know who exactly they are, or even what their demands are.

"Oh, well the J were this bunch of cool droids that sort of came out of the Unknown Regions and started taking stuff over. At first I think there was only one of them, but they sort of multiplied and now they own a whole bunch of systems." He reflects on this for a second, then, just to cover himself, adds, "They look like these big metal things. All shiny. Pretty easy to spot, you know?" He watches the news footage for a second or two to make sure there's nothing new on it, before muting it and continuing. "And RBS started out as just another bank. That's what the 'B' stands for. But they started buying other stuff, which made them even richer, and nobody really noticed 'cause one of the first things they bought was the HoloNet. And they used the money to build city-ships like the one we're on now - I think that might have been a tax dodge? Anyway, the Republic still exists, but they're so in debt to RBS from buying weapons and whatnot, they don't do much." He puts his rucksack down on the coffee table and starts digging through it, pulling out a slightly battered-looking datapad. He thumbs the power button and waits for it to turn on. "It's probably good that you ended up here rather than a J world if you're a force user then. J's tend to kill force users. Which is totally understandable of course, but I can see you might personally prefer being not-killed to being killed." The datapad lights up and Nils gives it a few experimental taps, before looking over to the sofa where Ceph is relaxing. "Mr. Ceph, was your datapad on when the signal got broadcast? Mine was off, so there's nothing in the logs I can use. "

Sovia pulls some odd looking vegetables from the cupboard, she sniffs them and, with a shrug, tosses them into a pan. Filling it with water she let's it begin to heat up as she begins chopping some other vegetables on the table.  "Why is it understandable to kill force users? " She fixes Nils with a stare as she continues to chop the vegetables. " So many people were trying, but they usually do it best themselves. What reason would metal things that can't even feel the wonder and pain of the force have for needing us gone? It is not like they can feed on that death as the last one I felt try... "

Lebenha can't really believe Nils words. The sounds of war, the cries of pain and help, the faces of the death crosses her sight as he speaks.  She takes deep breaths and tries that her voice doesn't sound tense, with little success. "You talking that way... obviuosly because you haven't face the J first hand. I envy you for that. The droids try to control everything and everyone. They cannot control the Force or its manipulation. They think that destroying the Jedi, or any Force-user, they will destroy the Force. Let's pray that they don't acknowledge that life itself creates it, for they could turn their impressive destruction power to all life. Then no one will consider them... cool. They must be stopped before it is too late. " she takes a moment " But first things first. RBS aren't an utopy or exent of big flaws, as any big organitation, but actually they are our last line of defense against the J-droids and their control and obliteration. We cannot afford this kind of behaviour. It's too risky. If this people wants to draw attention they should bring their cases to the Senate, for much influence and power the RBS has it hasn't bought the Republic... yet... Anyway the killing of innocent people is never justified to make a point. If you can check the date you said it would be wonderful..." 

Ceph's eyebrows shoot up at Nils' analysis of the J's. The genocidal robots tend to garner fear or repulsion from most people, or at the very least indifference. This guys seemed to almost... admire them. Regardless, Ceph pulls out his datapad and hands it over to the man. "You guys catch that? 'Grey Dawn' . Ring any bells for anyone?"

Nils, realising he may have spoken too freely, holds up his hands. "No offense intended, Miss Sovia. When I said 'understandable', I meant from the J's perspective of course. For the reasons Miss Lebenha says. Anyway, that's just what I heard, I'm new here too - maybe others have heard things said differently. What matters is the stuff you see and hear yourself anyway, right?" Hoping that's enough to allay any concerns, he takes Ceph's datapad. "Yeah, I saw that. Not heard of them." He thinks for a second. "Grey: The colour, often used to imply a lack of cheer or brightness in mood, outlook, style, or flavor - as in dismal or gloomy. Also implies prosaically ordinary - dull, uninteresting, the boring. Or sometimes having an intermediate and often vaguely defined position, condition, or character. Dawn: To begin to grow light as the sun rises, as in, 'I waited for the day to dawn'. To begin to appear or develop, as in, 'a new era is dawning'. Or to begin to be perceived or understood, as in, 'the truth finally dawned on us'. Taken together, it implies maybe a group whose motives are to either usher in a new era of, or increase our understanding of, boredom, gloominess, or balance. Of course that's just speculation. What we need is data." Walking over to the window, he begins tapping at Ceph's datapad, trying to find any remaining metadata about the signal it received, or its source.

Surprised by Nils words Lebenha takes a few minutes to focus and try to remember if hse had heard anything as "Grey Dawn" before.

It's a fairly trivial matter for Nils to pin down a vector for the origin of the signal. It clearly came from the direction of the station's central core, or possibly beyond it from the pier on the far side of the city. One detail does jump out at him though - the path directly crosses the main tower at the heart of the station. Is this coincidence, or design?

Nils hands Ceph's datapad back, and shows him the results of his trace. "I could maybe pin it down further with another device that was somewhere significantly different during the broadcast?" Leaving Ceph to decide what to do with the information, Nils picks up his own datapad again and starts trawling the HoloNet for any available data about the ship - owner registration and previous ports of call, and crew or cargo manifests.

Derrab rummages through the cabinets and the fridge for anything edible or drinkable. The strict defining of Grey Dawn seemed a bit too naive for his liking, but he wasn't any closer to an idea of what they might do. Hell, why was he even concerned about this? He was just supposed to be hired muscle. "What was the target again? If you can't figure out the enemy, figure out what they want."

“They want to cause unrest, as if there isn’t enough of that.” Ceph pipes in. He nods at Nils as he takes back the datapad. “Good work! So we need another device to triangulate it... aye Derrab, where were you when things popped off? Wanna lend Nils here your pad?”

"Hmm," says Nils, examining a number of red warnings popping up on his own tablet. He turns it over and pulls out its power cell. "You know, it might be worth relocating anyway. The port authority uses some really weird protocols, and, well, there's a pretty good chance they might know I tried to hack them. From here."

Sovia sighs as she stirs the soup she has started making. "Patience. The food is not ready yet and I would rather not leave it half made. We all need the rest and some sustenance. Besides, they what authority is likely to come? What are the crimes and what can they prove?" She pauses a second. " Ceph, didn't you say you work for the authorities? Can you contact the station and let them know you were making an enquiry? Perhaps you could even have them use the station terminal as the second point for Nils' tracking?" 

"Well, a ship exploded in that dock earlier, so they might be a bit more on edge than usual. But I suppose I don't know what 'usual' is."

Derrab hands over his datapad to Nils and Ceph, "You saw where I was when everything shook down. Thought about going, but I've had some...bad history with the medical staff."

Leb raises an eyebrow "So.. in the run again? or do you think you could manage that?" he asks to Nils

"They will be on edge, very much so. Any group that arrives just before the attempt and flees right after may just make them more so. A group eating dinner at the table will garner much less suspicion." Sovia's voice is calm and slow. Taking the tension and panic away from the conversation. "Now Ceph, are you able to help us by making this legitimate?"

"Ah..." he runs his hands through the tentacles sprouting from his head. "Yeah, I agree with you Sovia. Better to keep cool for now. If they bust in, then I can tell them the truth. We're contracted by RBS to look into the incident. If they question us squatting here... well that'll be trickier but hopefully it won't come to that. By the way that smells delicious." he says with a kind smile, hoping to defuse some of the tension.

Seeing his companions' apparently unconcerned attitude towards Nils' (admittedly foolish) mistake, he relaxes slightly. He takes Derrab's datapad and starts investigating it to see if it can provide any additional information. As he does so, he registers the chemicals in the air and files it under 'delicious'. 

"O kay, so, this one doesn't have as clear a signal. It was probably in a more shielded area and the signal is a bit attenuated. But I got a general direction, just not such a precise line as I got from the other. They do cross in the central district of the city, so the signal did not come from an outer pier. The result I have in this case is a cone, as opposed to a line so I have a region in which the line and cone cross," Nils informs Ceph. 

Half an hour passes, and eventually Sovia's stew is ready. The warm smell drifts from the pot filling the apartment. Everyone is sat around the table, happily enjoying the meal when, finally, there's a knock on the door.

Ceph lowers his spoon back into the bowl, looking longingly at the mouthful he was about to eat. He gives his companions a reassuring smile before walking to the door. If there’s a peephole he’ll look through first and then open the door.

Sovia smiles calmly at everyone. "Just continue eating, there is nothing to be suspicious of here." She nods for Ceph to open the door.

Through the peephole, Ceph sees a black human in a suit, flanked by pair of security officers. "Hello sir," he begins, peering inside beyond Ceph, "apologies for the disturbance. I'm Detective Okoye with station security. Not long ago we registered a cyber-attack on Port Authority's network from a device originating from this unit's network node. You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?" He lets the question hang in the air while he watches for a response.