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Our escape from Coruscant was not assured by any means. Once leaving the atmosphere we were hailed and told to stop and the orbital cannons trained on the ship. I set the garbage can to piloting the ship, put turret to… manning the turret if need be, gave the comm to Cookie to do with as he pleased, and began calculating a jump to hyperspeed. The garbage can did a good job avoiding the inevitable fire from the orbital cannons.

Just as I was about done with my calculations, some ships launched from the planet surface and angled up toward us. Three of them, there were. But just as I finished up, laser cannon fire blasted from out of nowhere nearby, vaporizing two of the land-launched ships. Coruscant's defenses immediately turned to dealing with this new threat, instead of us, who were non-threatening and just trying to escape.

But what was this invisible ship? Well, no time to ponder it; it was time to be going!

We made several hyperspace jumps to prevent being followed, while studying a very strange effect of the beacon sitting in the hold. Apparently it phased with hyperspace differently than we did. Cookie threw out some wild theories that made no sense. But anyway, the bottom line was that this was strange tech from some ancient culture and was probably attached to a ship that worked on wildly different astrophysical principles than modern ships. It didn't seem to hurt anything or be hurt itself. We monitored it and saved the data and headed on our way.

After about six or seven jumps we made a stop at Space Cuba to take stock of the situation we'd left behind. I monitored comms and news from Coruscant while the garbage can went outside to run diagnostics on the ship to make sure we hadn't any tracking devices and that the ship was still in good condition.

Well, it seem Coruscant was blaming us for the attacks even though we had nothing to do with it, and was speculating its own demise by a giant fleet of invisible ships that it was sure was headed its way. Good grief. Once we were done checking things over and gauging the state of the situation, we boarded back up and headed back off to Kreegan's asteroid for delivery.

We arrived in good time, debriefed to Bow'lurr, then debriefed to Kreegan wherein I sent Cookie off on a wild goose chase after his make-believe Sith Jawa. After the required meetings, we headed back to the ship to keep an eye on the beacon and wait for dinner or our employer to arrive to collect his prize. Or for something more interesting to happen.

Not long did we have to wait before the sleek black ship appeared. It landed with its usual grace and quietness, and about an hour later we were summoned for the expected meeting to exchange prize for loot.

Turret was assigned to bring the thing while Cookie elected to stay on board the ship to keep an eye out for his Jawa pal. When we entered the main hall, our Baronish employer was sitting quite casually on Kreegan's throne, and Kreegan et al were nowhere to be seen. Ah well.

Our employer was much more engaged during this conversation. He checked out the beacon, messed with it a little, opened it up and transferred a crystal form inside it to a hand-held device. We transferred to him the data I took from the ship the beacon had been attached to on Coruscant, and gave him all the information about the weird hyperspace phasing the thing did. He easily paid up the agreed-upon amount. In addition, he decided to give us his gimp, and commissioned us for a second job (without going through Kreegan). He didn't want Kreegan to be told about this job. Well, that was fine with me. He came to us, not the other way around. If Kreegan wanted to be paid for the use of his facilities if he found out about this later, then I had no problem. I was doing this strictly for the money, per se.

So anyway. The Baron wanted us to retrieve a ship like the one the beacon was attached to but that was more accessible than the one on Coruscant. Apparently the beacon was a way of connecting many ships of this type together, and those that were still intact could all be found using it. The gimp was to be used to translate the homing data produced by the device so that we could find it. Well, that sounded pretty straight forward.

Just as we were about to part ways, the Baron indicated to me that he wanted to talk to Cookie alone. I told him I'd relay the message to Cookie. Turret and I headed back to the ship and I gave Cookie the message. He headed off to his room in Kreegan's facilities and I sent the protocol droid after him with orders to keep an eye on the situation, since Cookie seemed to have a bit of trepidation about the idea of talking to the Baron.

I got no alerts from the protocol droid, and after not too long eventually Cookie showed back up to tell us that the Baron was a one Sith Malevius. And that he had a Jawa apprentice named Darth Spite. I was half suspicious Cookie was making that last part up just to continue this farce about the Sith Jawa. But anyway, I radioed the protocol droid and told it to return. Meanwhile, Cookie relayed that the Baron had offered to make him an apprentice apparently because the Jawa was kinda dumb and he wanted a “smart” apprentice. Cookie though? I was a bit skeptical about that.

Anyway, Cookie thought he would decline the Baron's offer but apparently the Baron had made it fairly clear that if he did so then the Sith Jawa apprentice would attack him. He was to provide the Baron with an answer in two hours. So we sat down and decided what we would do about Cookie potentially being attacked. At about that time, mister gimp showed up. I sent the gimp off to sit in Cookie's room in Kreegan's facilities. The gimp was very important for this next mission of the Baron's, so perhaps if the gimp was there when Sith Jawa showed up, Cookie wouldn't be attacked or at least the Jawa would have a disadvantage due to trying not to hit the gimp. Also, the Baron had mentioned the gimp had an explosive device on him, where the explosion extended approximately 3 meters radius from him. The thought was that the Baron would probably be quite displeased if the apprentice killed the gimp, which would make it impossible to retrieve the ship he wanted. And, the explosive device could be used, if needed, to take care of the Jawa if we ran out of options. At least, that was the theory.

Meanwhile, we needed to try to sneak our weapons into Kreegan's facilities if we felt Cookie was going to be attacked and that he needed fire support. After all, Cookie had relayed that the Jawa had been the one who killed the two Jedi, which is no small feat.

After discussing it, talking to the dockmaster, looking up schematics for a device that could cloak weapons, we finally decided to go with a hacking plan. I would essentially hack into the security system and insert some “malicious” code that would allow us to turn off the actual scan while the systems continued behaving like they normally would. It just wouldn't report anything found. With that, we loaded up the garbage can with my blaster, Turret's rifle, and Cookie's light saber, nabbed the protocol droid, and headed off into Kreegan's facilities to await the confrontation.

Cookie and the gimp sat in Cookie's room to wait, and turret and the two droids and I waited in the room next door. The plan was, if the Jawa attacked Cookie, that either Cookie would cut a hole in the wall with his light saber for us to run through and assist him, or turret would blow a hole open in the wall with his disruptor rifle.

And so, we waited, and listened quietly through the wall for sounds indicating the Jawa had shown up. Right on the two hour mark, he did. I heard a muffled exchange, and then a shout from Cookie over the comm indicating it was time for action!