[ Previous ] [ Back ] [ Next ]

After picking up a turret and a chef at Craigscross in the Org system, I headed off for Barakus-7, to meet with my (hopefully) new employer, Kreegan the Hutt. It took us a couple of days of flying around through the asteroid belt to locate the correct one. Once we came within sight of the dome on the face of the asteroid, I sent in the docking codes and we were approved and guided in for landing. We landed with care in the docking bay and then disembarked.

We were met at the bridge by Kreegan's Major Domo, a human named Bow-lurr Zhant. We exchanged a few words where I made a joke about my cook (even I am not totally sure why I hired him… my protocol droid can cook…), and then we briefly discussed the purpose of this visit: work. Bow'lurr seemed and agreeable sort, and willing to work with us, so after a few more minutes of exchange he lead us to some quarters where we could stay while we remained here to discuss business.

We were told that a formal dinner would be had in about an hour, and to dress nicely, so I made it clear to Argent that he had to look nice at dinner. My cook had already wandered off, but he knew to be there, so, I guess that was alright. I loafed around in my room getting ready at my leisure and then a protocol droid came by to take us to the dining room. I snagged Argent on the way out and still couldn't find the cook; oh well.

As soon as we entered the dining room, Argent and the cook were already behaving oddly, so instead of allowing them to draw embarrassing attention to themselves, I immediately engaged Kreegan, greeting him with a great amount of panache. We talked business in Huttese while my two employees finally made their way up to the table.

What he had for me in terms of job was this: we must retrieve a beacon from a cave on Coruscant. The beacon leads to a ship of historical value, for which Kreegan has a customer with interest. The catches are that it is a currently heavily populated area as it is part of an archaeological dig site. We must retrieve this thing before anyone else does, do it stealthily without being noticed, and leaving no traces back to Kreegan himself. Sure, no problem. We came to an agreement, and Kreegan told me we could stay another day if we wished to meet the buyer. I told him I'd think about it. We enjoyed the rest of dinner, and eventually Kreegan and Bow'lurr got up to leave, to retire for the evening. Bow'lurr mentioned on his way out a possible spy on the premises, and my cook for some reason seemed to know something about this.

After Bow'lurr departed, the cook mentioned on the way back to the ship something about the spy possibly being some sith lord that he seemed convinced was here. What? As we approached the ship, the cook then declared something about a Sith Jawa that snuck out of the landing gear of the ship. I sent Argent to check the area where the cook said the Sith Jawa disappeared and summoned my droid Barium to come look at the landing gear where the cook said the Sith Jawa had escaped from.

Meanwhile, I probed the cook for a detailed description of the creature and what he had seen because I was kinda skeptical, but he said such foolish things about it that there was no doubt he'd been mistaken. I told him to get back in the ship while I went to disengage Barium from what he was doing. As I approached, though, Barium began squawking that he saw something. I looked around where the nice piece of equipment indicated and found an extremely tiny tracking device, about the size of my pinky fingernail. I harrumphed to myself, and headed back up into the ship with Argent trailing along behind to go find the the cook to apologize for not believing him. But the cook wasn't in the ship. Sigh. What was up with this guy, anyway?

About half an hour later the cook wandered back in mumbling something about there not being anyone fitting the description in the system. I gave him a dressing down for not coming back to the ship like he had been ordered, and then we set aside the Sith Jawa in favor of discussing the job that Kreegan had proposed to us. Argent had interest in meeting the customer, so we agreed to stay until the following day. After that, I did some analysis on the power systems to see if I could determine how long the device had been there for. Unable to determine. The cook inspected the tap-site of the device and determined (how would a cook know??) that it had been there for under a week. After thinking about this for a bit, I decided to take the cook down to the security station to inform them of their little mysterious mischief-maker.

The cook described the sitch to the security officer, who told us to return to the ship and he'd be back in a few minutes.

Minutes later, a full scanning crew appeared and Bow'lurr came down to talk to us. I had the cook again describe what he saw to him as the scanning crew did their thing. They crew determined that someone had in fact been here and Bow'lurr made it a point to mention that he was glad the spy appeared to not be one of their own people. He made no mention of the implanted tracking device, and left us be. I declined a security detail on the ship, and the three of us, me, the cook, and Argent returned to the ship.

Given what Bow'lurr had said and not said, I decided we'd leave the tracking device in place for now, and that on the way to Coruscant, we'd stop off and remove it then, and perhaps place it on a different ship. This seemed a good enough plan for now. We all headed back to our quarters and slept for the evening.

The next day some kind of meteor shower awoke us, but the dock crew didn't seem alarmed in the slightest, so we went back to bed. Later, after we'd been up for a bit and were chatting in the kitchen of the ship, another ship came into dock. It was a sleek black thing with special, unusual engines. We watched from the Tempest as weird people exited it after it landed, but it was too late before I noticed that the the cook had slipped the ship while Argent and I were gawking, and… engaged what was obviously a Sith Lord. Good grief. What do I pay this guy for?

After the cook returned from thoroughly embarrassing me, I gave him a dressing down for being such a creeper to a person who was paying a significant amount of money to employ us. Good grief. I forbade him from attending dinner because I didn't want to be associated with such a mortifying interaction. He would probably have no confidence in our abilities after such a display, if he knew the cook was employed by me. What was I paying this guy for anyway? *facepalm*