《The Biggest Worm: SI/RE: Nute Gunray Fanfic.》


 Become the Worm

    Nute Gunray, the villain, the coward, the worm, and as of, oh 5 minutes ago me.  Yes, probably one of the most reviled characters of star wars outside of the Hutts, any Hutts mind you, so whatever that entire species population is, +1.  Ahh, and my helpful niemidian brain just supplied the number as of the las republic census, somewhere in the range of 2 trillion, actually pretty light for such a successful long lived species, so that +1 is where I the new Nute Gunray rank in hatred.


    Now, I should probably begin with, I was not always Nute Gunray.  I was originally an ''earth dude'', and don''t get me wrong I can''t remember which one, because my past is being eroded by something.  Yeah, I''m way more mad about that then you are, trust me.  So at first I wanted to panic, but apparently Niemedians are actually quite resitant to panic, I know who knew?  But they are a logical pragmatic species, like evil Volcans mixed with Ferangi.  So obviously I am now hyperventilating... Like a lot.  And the two jedi that just stabbed a laser sword into my door are not helping.  "Release the Droidika!"  I screamed, probably one of the smartest moves Nute had ever done.  Man did I want to shoot whoever opened that damn door in the face, but we don''t do that Nute... yet...


    The Jedi raced down the corridor at a rapid pace, with the invasion of Naboo already beginning there is nothing I can do to stop them from escaping, events already set in motion.  Now I''m glad I killed(?) old Nute Gunray already, because I want to murder him again.  I close My eyes as I need to focus, the hyperventilation not helping.  "Raise the gravity!" I order.  The Niemidian homeworld has immense gravity, enough to spur evolution of our species.


    "But sir, the loses!"  "Did I stutter?  Raise. The. Gravity!"  I repeat.  The tech raises the gravity to 2.0 then 3.0 csg.  It''s helping but "Higher!" I scream.  And they comply, I feel it raised to 4.0, 5.0, all the way up to 7.8.  "Higher!" I state now much more composed.  "I, I, I''m sorry sir, but that is as high as it, it goe...s..." the tech states.  The comfort of higher gravity has already stopped my hyperventilating, with my body processing the oxygen better, and the entire bridge crew calms down.  However, several droids are on the floor, many of them broken, including most of the B1s and OOMs here for our protection.  Still not near the 14.8** of our homeworld, but passable enough.  I remind myself to equip better gravity generators as my species can survive at much higher g then most others including humans.  I highly doubt that the clones equipped with even regular anti-g gear could survive if we dropped 15+ gs, let alone my species max 150 csg.  Granted, even we could not survive that all of a sudden, or long, but most Jedi couldn''t even survive that at all, forget clones.


    Ahh, why am I worried about clones?  They are like 9+ years away?  Because I''m IN STAR WARS!  I have Sidious, I have the Yuzan Vong, Plagious is still running around, Jedi are ACTIVELY AFTER MY HEAD and I''m ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE REPUBLIC!  Had I been reincarnated before Nute left his homeworld I would have changed so, so much, or died terribly because the Niemidians are well known for how terrible they are at raising their own children, among other things.


    Now that the Jedi are off my ship I can hold my head and die a little inside.  Breathing in the thick air I refocus.  I have an invasion to oversee, even though it''s already been planned out, and puppeted by the man pulling my strings.  Old Nute is going along with it as Sidious arranged for his promotion, pieces falling into place and blackmail delivered.  Old Nute thought he could get around things, current Nute new that he was the convenient pawn of a pawn, not even a real piece on the board, yet.


    When Sidious kill Plagious Nute''s value will skyrocket, though only because he is a sacrificial piece.  Nute needs to be a good little fuck up until then.  So he looks at the board, he cannot even maliciously apply, not for now.  Oh, and he needs to call Sidious, should probably get to that.  Getting up from the holographic display of Theed and scrolling out to all of Naboo I leave the room.  I call Sidious with my most important stooges around me, after I turn the gravity back down of course.  Events happen much the same way as in the movie, and I am glad I brought the stooges to take the blame, though latter I will find several dead in their quarters to laser sword wounds, what a mystery!  And I was so sure that the Jedi had left too, oh well we will never find out who or how...


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    Well, Maul was prowling, but by now I was sure that Sidious had already ordered him after the Jedi, how he got on or off my ship, well I needed to add upgrading my sensors to the growing list.  It was early, so the droids were kind of pathetic, but I also wanted to upgrade many of them, at least for me.  I would need my own honor guard, after all, Dooku had his own and he didn''t even make droids, while I traveled with like barely 20 and that was literally the cost of 4 new blasters!**


    After getting yelled at by Sidious I returned to ''my'' invasion.  It was all preplanned of course, scripted even.  While Padme had the heart of the people this was Sidious back yard, and even if he hated the world he still had more backroom deals that were older that the incumbent queen was.  This did not mean that his position was all that strong however, he was just the right hand of Plagious at the moment, no matter how much Plagious loved him like a son, he also treated him as a child.  This was not surprising for long lived species to treat short lived ones.  My own life expectancy, were I to survive long enough, would be around 300** years with certain exceptional individuals living 400 or even 500 years, and treated humans in a similar manor, as lessors or pets.


    Looking at the map of my invasion I see the pacifist fold like wet paper.  While there are blasters on planet they are only specialty pieces.  Even the police only have stunners, good against droids but not enough, especially if they are the sonic variant.  This meant that I really had to only care about the crazy coot outside town that the rest of the town shunned for owning a gun, but were too passive aggressive to actually do anything about.  It''s funny that, instead of the police and what little military that Naboo had, mostly the royal guards themselves who had been deployed by the queen, my major concern was the outcasts... wait...


    Foolish!  Why didn''t I think of it earlier!  The outcasts of course...  Instead of malicious compliance, I could apply malicious success!  Oh I was sure that the queen would escape.  Already Qui Gon and Obi-Wan had stolen the control program for the droids under OOM-14 and had been deactivated.  I knew they would take this program back to Curescant where the senate and the council would leave things be, after all, it was big, but not new.  The Jedi would then return with Anakin who would take out the lead ship deactivating the army before they could have control transferred.  This weakness would not be eliminated even far into the future when it was used to destroy a new order fleet.


    Returning to the map, I could see that Theed was being surrounded on several sides, it would not be long now, but it could all wait till morning.  Still, I gave out orders moving a few units around, removing some from here, adding others to there and reactivating OOM-14 under the command of OOM-09.


    **Niemidia supposedly had a higher gravity which caused the native Duros population to evolve into the Niemidians, however, in the same wookiepedia entry it also says the planet has standard G.  Since it''s integral to the Niemidians I decided that their planet had 14.8 G which is servivable for a very short time by humans with training.  But will kill them if exposed for any real length of time.  Similarly, Niemidians can survive it, but will kill a Duros.  Also, this is why Niemidians hyperventilate so much, they are basically at ''high altitude'' constantly, which they can survive, but other species cannot survive the inverse.


    **Yup, B1s are super cheap in lore, literally a pack of 5 with the E-11s is the price of a decent but normal blaster, not a cheap blaster mind, but a normal one regardless.


    **So, humans in SW have a life expectancy of 200 years, for those that do not know, life expectancy is the means average, meaning that in spite of how many swaths of humans die regularly in SW the average death is still at 200 years.  There is no entry at how long a Niemidian or Duros can live for, or much on their species special characteristics, so I am winging it and saying that their LE is 300, just 100 years more than humans.  Still, that is a long time, especially if you are not jedi which barely make a dent in the pop metrics.  And Duros, being average or better than humans, consider themselves superior to humans, and thus the rest of the races of the galaxy.

 Burrowing Worm

    I sent several droids down to the swamps.  I was sure the Gunguns were around, and had heard of the invasion.  However, they were also excellent at hiding.  So good that they were no more than legends amongst the native human population.  Looking carefully there was trade between the surface and the Gungun below, and new Nute would bet his left testicle that the surface was using the Gunguns to mine their plasma, at least in part.  Nevermind that those were shed and grown back during mating season, and ''bet my left testicle'' was a famous Niemidian saying for wagering nothing when your opponent thought you were betting everything.


    Meanwhile he had several droids outfitted for high pressure aquatic environments with the onboard factory.  New Nute found that he actually enjoyed the designing process of the whole thing.  Old Nute had hated it as he had performed a minor stint as R&D director before murdering up the ladder.  However, where old Nute had hated the tedious process of designing refurbishing and redesigning, new Nute the process relaxing.  It also gave me an appreciation for how crap of a designer Anikan was.


    Yes, Anikan Skywalker was a terrible designer.  This can be seen with C3P0.  As I was thinking of that dreaded droid I realized several things; 1 he had simply cribbed the design off of the holonet, 2 while he might make a decent scrapper engineer he made a terrible... well engineer, he had simply made the droid too spec, and not exceeding them or making them more efficient.  Later he would work with R2 to make the droid better, but I had the sneaking suspicion that was more R2 than Anikan.  Lastly, even with all of that, it would have been acceptable or even appreciated that he was young and thus forgiven, but he failed on the most important thing, he didn''t do it right in the first place.


    Every engineer knows you follow the rules and laws of engineers as if bible until you are all about to die either way, at least if you stop following those rules and laws you can feel like your doing something before you die.  Which means you aren''t ignoring the rules, your creatively interpreting them, fully aware they will come back to punish you when your done, if you survive.


    Anikan ignores them constantly.  Granted, it works, sort of, but in so many more ways it does not.  For example, most protocol droids are made by the Trade Federation.  That means, Nute was very familiar with them.  And I know that their internals are dirt cheap.  Yes, Protocol droids are expensive, but only because of their shiny expensive exterior and because of the copyrights on all of the latest translation software.


    When Anikan built C3P0 he likely did 2 things, salvaged an old protocol droid slicing the soft, and copy pasted some of the soft off of the holonet.  Salvaging a protocol droid isn''t a bad choice and I would probably do the same, but the soft off of the holonet is so full of viruses and malware that the droid was probably a walking advertisement.  Actually, this make sense for its whiny personality, it probably had so many conflicting corporate handbooks loaded into its brain that it''s more amazing that the droid still functioned.  I would know, old Nute made several of them, as well as much of the ''free ware'' on the holonet for translation purposes.  Obviously this was a money grab for some feel good senate projects, even more for the under the table deals he had made with various parties for the soft.  One of course was the Hutts and another was the Zeltron, for completely different reasons.


    This did not even go into the hardware issues.  Everyone knows you test rng and origin to make sure the system doesn''t lock up.  Even B1s don''t lock up like C3P0, and they were cheap corporate knockoffs thrown together.  Their soft is so conflicting that the only way they function is THROUGH the errors and not the soft itself.  New Nute wanted to cry into his hands AND shoot some people for that.  But it was out of his hands, at least for now.


    Finally, the B1s had captured a Gungun child.  Not... admittedly how he wanted to start the situation.  But neither could beggars be choosers, nor is the situation untenable.  Theed was also now surrounded on all sides and the palace was rapidly being taken over.  Soon the queen would be captured and then taken away from his grasp, he had plans for that.  EXPLOSIONS!


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    But first, he gave the Gungun child some hot maka maka, a sweet chocolate like drink that reminded him of hot chocolate, if it was spicy and the flavor palate was all wrong, but close enough for kids, I shrugged.  There was some on the ship due to this vessel of war STILL BEING A TRADING VESSEL...


    In fact, the reason why there were so few B1s in the assault is because most of the hold of the vessel was still filled with cargo.  Of course, at this point the Trade Federation was still in its infancy militarily.  But, there were still 33** vessels involved in this blockade.  Yet there were only several hundred thousand B1s and some tanks involved in the invasion.  The numbers did not add up.  Speaking of, I launched several wings of vulture droids to hover over the space ports.  Those I had a lot of as the Trade Fed had figured they would need them more since they were... well the TRADE Federation.


    Figuring out what was best, for a Gungun child was difficult, it didn''t help that sexism was alive and well in the SW universe and I was dealing with a little (?)girl Gungun.  So, I inundated her with toys, everything from the latest toy blaster that shot REAL? blaster bolts, that were actually stun rounds that wouldn''t even do more than send a static shock into the target.  Made a great fly swatter though, and could kill cheap droids with less protection than even a B1.  But I also gave her a new, very frilly dress, a B1 plushie, a B1 action figure, a B1 lunch box... Lots of B1 merch on board to sell how ''assume'' the Trade Federations new droid is and why you should by one... or five.


    When the Gungun raiding party launched its assualt on the B1s stationed there they were assaulted with the most beutiful beaming smile the Gungun little girl could make.  It was truly blinding... for the Gunguns at least.  And it lit up her face, till she realized the ''bombas'' killed her new friends.  Now the raiding party led by the warrior general Roos Tarpals had to explain to the young Gungun that the B1s were in fact the bad guys, that they were the good guys, and that they should leave right now...


    Oh, and that she should put down all her merch that her new bad guy friends just gave her and told her to share with her friends so that they could leave faster... it also wasn''t water proof.


    I of course, was laughing my ass off as I watched.  To the point that I was well aware the other Niemidians, and even some of the smarter B1s were avoiding the command room.  Good for them, I didn''t want them ruining my mood, especially with their stupid and inefficient efficiency reports.


    Deciding to do Roos a favor I initiated a holocall.  I had been talking with the young girl on and off till the warriors had gotten there, waiting for an adults arrival.  So the little girl wasn''t surprised when my one meter projection came to life on a nearby holoprojector.  The warrior gunguns turned their bombas launchers at me, but the little girl came running, and crying.


    I soothed the young girl, and did Roos another favor.  I explained that the B1s were not dead, what''s that?  No, they were in fact sleeping, and before she knew it they would be back up and moving around, with only slight memory issues...  I also explained that she should take this micro holoprojector and make sure to give it to the most importantist person she could think of, and not take no for an answer!  When they were done with it she would even get the holoprojector as a reward for a super secret super important mission.  When she asked "Like a jedi?!" with stars in her eyes it hurt a little, but I agreed that normally I would send a jedi to do it, but even they couldn''t be trusted, only her, it worked.  The B1s did not extend the cordon around my room when I <del>cackl</del> cough laughed like a mad man by using weaponized children diplomacy.


    ** so, in images of the invasion of Naboo there are 4 to seven lucrehulks at any time.  However, this is only one facing of the planet.  If we assume that the other 3 lucrehulks chasing the queen came from nearby facings and the standard is 4 then multiply that by 8 we get 32 lucrehulks in the blockade.  I added one more to round them out for a command lucrehulk.  Of course it is possible that there were only one or two lucrehulks in those other areas and there were only four over top of Theed, but that is too much brain work.  Especially since that means they pulled out the blockade in other areas to prevent the queen from leaving.  That is... not impossible, but unlikely because the other reason they did not want the queen to escape is because they did not want news of the invasion itself to spread.

 Worm Diplomacy

    Currently I was looking into the holo of a very angry Boss Nass, and fighting <i>very</i> hard not to laugh.  I could also see a now familiar Gungun little girl in the holo.  She was showing off all her new toys to several other Gungun kids but she seemed quite taken with the toy blaster... which caused me to sweat a little because I realized that size shape and looks, looked exactly like an E-11...  Whoever was in the toy department that designed this was getting murdered, we did not need the lunatic in the Trade Federation.  Realizing what a disaster it was, I quietly made an emergency message to upgrade the blasters into full stunners and rebrand them as lightweight protection.  The upgrade wasn''t hard, and wouldn''t even add any weight to the ''toy''.  It would only require a few internal tweaks to turn the toy into a better stunner than even what the Naboo ''police'' had.


    Getting back to Boss Nass, who was still very angry at me for stealing his, well, she was the niece of the brother in law of Boss Nass cousin, so she technically wasn''t anything to him... But considering she had been forced onto his lap, climbed on top of him like a tree or rock, and ran around his meeting area like she owned the place, I was pretty sure he had adopted her, or she had adopted and enslaved him... I wasn''t sure which at this point.


    The funniest part was that Boss Nass kept his thousand yard glare on my the entire time, I may have secretly recorded the entire thing for blackmail later.  Who I would be blackmailing I wasn''t sure.


    Now, Boss Nass was understandably angry with me.  I would be as well, sort of.  How was I supposed to contact him when the Gunguns had run away to their secret base.  Considering the timing, and that I knew the Jedi were already at Theed I blamed it all on Binks.  Boss Nass did not curse... in a language I knew... which was pretty impressive because Nute was fluent in 31 languages and could curse in... a lot more.


    "I would like to propose an alliance." I said, pretty obvious and on the point I know, but there are only so many unique ways to say hello, and not go into obscure languages to do it.


    "You surface worlders are all alike, make demands of Gungun, yet never show your face to Gungun, expect Gungun to serve you!  Brrrbrrrbrrr."  Boss Nass said.  The glare from a certain young Gungun did not make me laugh... I turned down the gravity in the room to .75 to keep me focused and strait faced.


    "I suppose it is good then that I am on my way to the surface, you will find me at the lake where I... met this precocious little Gungun."  I said.  I was well aware of how the Gungun operated, honest, open, and honorable.  They were not stupid, or silly like they were demonstrated on tv, and they actually made fairly good pilots.  Gungun pod racers did fairly well on the open circuit every year, the few that left their homeworld.


    Boss Nass stared at me incredulously.  What the Corellian hell was going through my head?  And only then did I smile, because I knew I had him.  Now, Most Niemidians would not be able to set up this deal, in fact I was actually amazed at how well the Niemidians as a species did.  It was only the sheer power of their trade fleet that allowed them to compete.  And the reason was simple, they only understood numbers, numbers go up good, numbers go down bad, that simple.  They literally evolved that way, because star wars, it worked...


    But Gunguns were different, they only traded or dealt with ''friends'', there was no need to deal with anybody else.  It was why they retreated deep, and were exploited so hard by the surface humans.  For them as a species the deal was actually good, sell off some ''useless'' plasma and don''t have to deal with other people that are not friends.  People only look at the surface of Naboo and not go any deeper.  Even Sidious did not know of or deal with the Gunguns and he was a local, that I did not ''know''.  Then again, Sidious grew up as a small town suburbanaut, with no connection with the nobility that were actively secretly trading with the Gungun using the mining operations as a front, or the kicks that saw the Gungun regularly but sporadically.  Sidious grew up thinking that the Gungun were myth and monster.


    I knew differently, the Gungun were actually a very old race, with no exact origins they had been advancing their shield tech to a terrifying degree.  They had to, with the monsters that traveled the deep of Naboo.  It was also why they used bombas, plasma based explosives.  Because they had to effectively fight underwater krayt dragons, many larger than even those monsters on Tatooine.  I had no doubts that Boss Nass bigger concern was not the invasion, that would have a hard time reaching the depths that the Gunguns were at, but some ancient and scared enemy monster that was longer than an imperial star destroyer, and they haven''t even dreamed of those yet.


    So for me to personally come down, and be the first surface worlder to treat with the prime minister of the Gunguns to a face to face meeting.  Old and new Nute felt for the Gunguns, even when they were forced from the surface by the Naboo they were not treated like people, and just animals to be moved.  While they were not a naturally space faring people, it was simply because they lacked a need.  Very very few Gunguns left the depths these days, and fewer still left for the stars, so they developed advanced technology, particularly shields, but not space ships.  This left them vulnerable when the Naboo invaded, and still vulnerable to the trade federation.


    However, this did not mean they were not technologically advanced.  Yet another thing the Naboo stole from the Gungun was technology.  The same technology that allows the Gungun to glide through the depths with ease is what gives Naboo craft its advantage in all areas over other craft in the galaxy.  The Gungun probably didn''t even know that the Naboo were using their tech in such a way, but not it was painfully obvious to me.


    As I looked out through the ambassadorial sub''s shielding that they quickly slap dashed together I was amazed by the wildlife.  Also, I found it terrifying and slightly hilarious about how the Gungun were putting it together.  We were waylaid 16 times by wildlife and the Gungun doubled, then tripled that number, then octupled that number of guards as they chased away ancient horrors, or more often then not, baited away the beasts with Gungun lives.  The route I took was incredibly circuitous and took who knows how much longer as we were constantly diverted.  But I knew that the Gunguns were growing more and more anxious about the meeting the longer it took.


    At first it seemed the Gunguns did not care, like in the movie.  They were a very isolationist if codependent species.  Only needing Gunguns.  However, it soon dawned on them that this was a momentous occasion for the Gungun, as the surface was not treating them like savages, but as an actual people.  And soon, I saw the naked greed, something my people the Niemidians spoke very well, as they realized the potential of striking out to the surface without the Naboo in the way.


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    While the Gunguns still wished to remain reclusive mostly, they still thirsted for things.  Being unable to leave the depths of the planet due to an ill thought out, but dystopianly functional treaty had allowed the Gungun to thrive in almost as many ways as it had suffocated them.  Their limited trade with the surface had given them what little outside needs they had, mostly a piece of technology here or there, or some republic credits to give to the outcasts or wanderers that left Gunga.  But the Gunguns themselves were self sufficient, and had developed very advanced technology in isolation.  The unintended tour had shown him many sites, tourist outposts he had unintendedly visited for a short period, and ancient architecture that the ancient Gunga had used in times past.


    In one particular and slightly hilarious note, my guards and I were ''not'' forced to take a tour of an ancient structure that was still occasionally in use as a hunting outpost.  An ancient temple, who knows how old, made of stone in the unique architecture of the Gunga.  Unlike the stone piece in the movies, this one still had the paint and details left after time, because it was left untouched by the elements forgotten by time and the elements both in the depths.  It was beautiful, like Nepalese, the Kremlin Palace, and the Taj Mahal had a perfectly beautiful baby.  I wished we could have seen and explored the much larger structures we passed, but there were no giant monsters hunting us at those times unfortunately.  Instead I had Lunch in one of the glass observatories watching a monster chow down on another monster.  The Gunguns were polite enough not to interrupt me in spite of really wanting to turn my attention away from the Kiaju massacre.


    But eventually the tour ended, taking the better part of a day and a half for what should have only been three curesca hours.  Circuitous route indeed.  Again, this could be blamed on Binks, as they stirred up the monsters, but I would only learn of this much later.  I simply apologized to the horrifiedly embarrassed Gunguns for not being prepared for the journey and blaming myself for it.  Or so it appeared.  Mostly, I didn''t want for the situation to become any more awkward than it already was as that may ruin the negotiation as the turned me away in embarrassment.  That would come back to bite me worse later as that would turn into anger at me, even though it was their own fault, something only I knew I could not afford.


    "Brrrbrrrbrrr These Naboo!  How dare they rename the ancient and revered Gunga!  How dare they steal what is ours!  The planet belongs to us!  It is in their treaty!  Which they signed!  And we followed!  Brrrbrrrbrrrbrrrbrrr!"  He stated in anger.  Even his fellows stepped back from him, both angry and afraid.  I waved my droids down before they could move in to protect me, I knew I was safe for now.  "I would be interested in this treaty you keep mentioning Boss Nass.  I would also like to point out that this is very interesting.  Your people are so advanced, yet the Naboo claimed this world as uninhabited, and thus ripe for colonization.  But I am given to understand that is only possible if there is a non-native population of non sentients who have not invented space flight, and the planet must be given back to them once they have been ''enlightened'' "  I said.  Not that that second thing ever happened, as when it was time people conveniently ''forgot'' they were supposed to hand the planet back.


    But finally I found Boss Nass, and a little Gungun monkey hanging off of him, like a jungle gym.  He welcomed me with open arms... and slobber, which I could have done without.  Again, I was glad I was the Niemidian doing the job, as most would have started shooting right there.  I did have 60 B1s and 13 OOM with me, but they would be limited so far from a repeater.  I was also glad I did not bring any ''meatbags'' along as well.


    "So Boss Nass, your nation is quite beautiful."  I said.  Boss Nass Nodded, slobbered and then said, in that order "Yes, my nation is beautiful, my people are beautiful, and my planet is beautiful, we Gunga are truly blessed!"


    "Oh, I was not aware it was your planet, I thought it was owned by the Naboo?"  I said, with faux sincerity.  The anger and rage I saw in Boss Nass face was worth it.  "Brrrbrrrbrrrbrrrbrrr, those dirty Naboo!  They take the homeworld of the Gunga, say that it is for their betterment, and use that to take more from the Gunga!  They force us into the deep, and say it is for our benefit!  They take our plasma and give us trinkets and say it is for us!  We are the true rulers of ancient Gunga!  Not Naboo!"  He said, and I was suddenly not sure if the shower of saliva was worth it.


    I smiled, fully knowing I had him.  "But that is not what the republic senate says, they say that this planet of Naboo, belongs to the Naboo, not the Gunga."  The anger in his eyes, seeing that the planet had not even kept its ancient name was all the trap I needed, though it did mean I had to prepare for a tirade of complaints I was sure was coming.  I also had to be careful, as if I pushed too far he may see me as no different than the rest of the surface and decide to simply try to get rid of them all.  Not the worst outcome, but not the most beneficial.


    Oh this set off Boss Nass something fierce.  I stepped back as he devolved into what I could only call an animal, constantly spraying the area in saliva, only broken by a few words, most of what I could understand being swears, and the rest I could only think must be the native language.  "They, they dare!  They dare to claim the Gunga are savages!  How... After all we have done, after all the time...  How dare, how dare they!"  I wondered if this is what the sith felt when they turned someone to the dark side, I have to say not bad...  I also noticed that the young Gungun had been escorted out sometime during our talks, probably before Boss Nass started cursing.


    "Why yes, and it has passed the 500 year mark.  At this point for a species to not have space travel it becomes a protectorate of the species that is ''guiding'' as they are clearly underdeveloped and cannot be allowed to guide themselves, you can thank the Hutts for that."  I said.  Boss Nass squeezed his fists till they turned greenish white, and I could see blood dripping down.  He was a silent angry now, as his face turned a dark black, and veins bobbed as he shook.


    "What do you wish to do, the Naboo, they cannot be trusted. For them, for what they did to us..." he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, but it might have well been thunder for the seething anger behind it.  I knew of course I could ask anything, and the Gungun would act my knife.  There would be a war with the surface now, regardless of what I said or did now, now that the Gungun knew.  Because the agreement was a carefully crafted noose.  At first it looked innocent, the Gungun need not use the surface, as they were an aquatic species anyway.  Why should they risk war?  Simply split the planet into land and sea and be done with it.  But no, because they had no exposure to the greater republic the didn''t know the hidden rules that were burried deep, the hidden meanings, the hidden context.  The entire agreement was a trap, and the Gungun were slaves the moment the signed that agreement... no further back, the moment the Naboo saw their lush planet they had enslaved the Gungun no better than pirates they denounce!


    "Oh my dear Nass, do not fear me or what I have to offer, for together we shall rule the galaxy!"  I said, and in a way I meant it.  Sure, it was doomed to failure, but I knew that I was already failed, and in a way so were the Gungun, but, just one stone placed, one pillar raised, and maybe if we raised enough, the sky just wouldn''t fall on our heads...

 Worm Rising

    Boss Nass furrowed his brow at the report he was reading, it was simply and literally too good.  There had to be a catch somewhere but he was just too stupid to find it, just like his ancestors, maybe the Gunga deserved their fate, they were too stupid to think for themselves.  "No Boss Nass, it is not a trap for you.  While you are yet again a pawn played on the board, this time you have no need to worry of the play.  Here, this is the offer to the Naboo, the offer for  plasma you mined for them..."  I said as I passed over another document.  The conditions were terrible, the offer absurd, it was downright scandalous... Boss Nass crushed the datapad because it was already twice what his people were paid.


    "No, I can see what your thinking.  I do not need slaves."  I passed over some documents, it literally stated that the planet would be his.  There weren''t even any caveats or catches or loopholes.  Figuring that he would need the republic context for the documents I even had those highlighted and sent over as of the most recent council meeting, and further sent over the rest of the senates rulings and Republics rules and laws just so that he knew I was not screwing him over or in case I forgot anything.


    "It''s simple really, we just have to give you the planet!"  I said.  Boss Nass turned away, aware of just how much that would cost them.  Still, better to be slaves in the house than slaves in the field he thought.


    I honestly wanted to give him the planet.  Because then I could sign with the legitimate leader of the planet and sector.  Of course, I knew I could not do so too soon.  Sidious would have to become chancellor first, can''t let my master tug on my leash too soon.  But I would be out of his sight soon enough.  When the Trade Federation was sanctioned for this action I would be ''forced'' to ''retreat'' from the limelight.  But nothing could really be done.  While I was aware that I was untouchable, there were several voting blocks on the senate that were literally owned legally by corporation''s.  They didn''t even bother stating who these voting blocks technically belonged to, they were just the Trade Federation senator or the IGBC senator.  It was convenient when your financial block had enough capital to simply rename some poorer sector, purchase it''s seat on the senate, and have a team of lawyers keep the lawsuit going till the original clamant died of natural causes.


    "This cannot be right.  If this, if my people had this..."  yes, if Boss Nass''s people had this contract they would be wealthier, work less and already be traveling out and about in the galaxy.  I of course had several additions annotated such as an orbital refinery and fueling depot, full time defense fleet and several others.  ostensibly those were supposed to make sure the plasma flowed, a ''protection fee'' however, with the Gungun it would be a protection benefit.  But Boss Nass would have taken the ''scandalous'' and ''abusive'' contract as is.  I simply wanted to invest in Naboo knowing that by the time the clone wars even started I would have made at least twice the return, if not more.


    Of course, the Trade Federation was not here without reason, like most places, including Eriudu, Naboo had signed agreements with the Trade Fed.  However, while Naboo itself was safe, protected by the Nabooian/Gungun star fighters, just outside their patrols lay mass pirates.  These pirates were hungry and held even star frigates ready to take the fat sheep that had left Naboo.  Only the strongest and most well equipped trade fleets could make the run because of these pirates, or the most desperate smugglers.  So Naboo had made a deal with the Trade Fed, a deal the reneged on.  Simple really, the Trade Fed had to enforce their trade deal.  The seizure of assets itself was legal.  However, they needed to make a new deal to legalize the... not blockade, but ''protection fleet'', yes, so simple really.


    It worked in most cases, and the few that had pushed back couldn''t make waves before the Trade Fed tightened the screws.  When it was said that the Trade Federation ruled the outer rim it was not a jest, but a fact of life.  And it was working until Naboo.  Of course, the old Nute Gunray knew this, that wasn''t the purpose.  Unbeknownst to Naboo and everyone the entire senate had been traded away in a back room deal that had been maneuvered and danced around for decades if not centuries.  Depends on if you only counted the ''small'' plays of Sidious or the Big ones of the sith that came before him slowly eroding away at the Republic.


    But now Nute had a way to change things.  Sidious may think that Nute was still playing by his handbook but he will soon find things taken out from under him.  Nute did not want to wait 30 years for a young Luke to kill off the emperor, though he was not so sure that he could prevent the Empire itself from rising.  Still, he has until the clone wars to maneuver pieces in the galaxy around, hopefully he can keep Plagious, or his ghost, on the board to keep Sidious in check until then.


    Meanwhile, on the surface while Nute was in discussions with Boss Nass and Nute had him on his knees begging... wait... Anyway!  The droid army was locking down the surface.  They had the Queen in her chamber droids taking her from all sides firing their blasters on her.... wait...  But that was only to take down her royal guard!  Strong  men with stronger blasters, they shouldered the blasts of these machines repeatedly at the orders of their Queen!  Many fell to their knees painting, many more lay on the floor, no longer able to blunt the penetration of the machines advance!  And of course the Queens handmaidens!  These well trained ladies could take whatever the relentless machines could dish out, using both hands, and even their mouth when necessary!... wait...


    Yes, it was a fearsome battle, just a regular, very bloody battle... Kinda... Blaster tended to cauterize, but blood still leaked through where the arteries used to be... So just a regular battle.  Still, the Queen and her handmaidens were quickly captured.  The machines were not able to process which one was the Queen, but Niemidian culture placed special importance on large hats so the Droids self learning algorithm did as well, while ignoring the males as the Queen was female(?).  The non organics did not truly understand the concept of male or female unless you counted the factory they were assembled in, but they were not built to process morality, or philosophy.  However, this was one of the few places where specially built stunners were used, as they couldn''t hurt the Queen, mostly.  if the Queen died a new election would be held, but it would still look bad and take time.  Since time was <i>not</i> on the Trade Federation''s side they wished to capture her alive and well enough to sign the treaty.


    Hundreds of droid corpses littered the hallways surrounding the queens chambers.  The Queen would have used the ancient secret passages there, but the droids attempted to pour into the room through those as well.  The rest of the planet belonged to the droids now and it was only one small room that was putting up any resistance.  Most of the Naboo fighters were locked down in the hangers around the planet, and the few that were fueled and ready for launch against what stupid pirates would attack them were quickly dealt with with vulture droids.  Of course, the silly Trade Federation had withdrawn all but a few droids, but Nute had nixed that in the bud.  Still, the droids could not outfly a Naboo craft, so they had to out predict them.  Any craft that tried to launch would quickly find that they had flown into a flock of vultures.  A few smugglers had tried to escape, but their old pieces of junk and the few high end ships quickly found that they were <i>not</i> Naboo craft, and couldn''t even outfly the thousands of vulture droids around the planet.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Still, without Nute to herd them, the Trade Federation captains had started to complain about the loses of profits, seeing the opportunity they decided that it wouldn''t hurt to remove some of the droids.  With one doing so, many others did so, and the blockade weakened considerably.  But who would tell Nute?  certainly none of these captains would.  (Oh, Nute would know, and soon profits would be the least of many of these captains worries...)


    This meant that the blockade over Theed had lightened up considerably.  Still no traffic left, but the lacking vulture droids was notable, and a few more had tried, and failed, to leave.


    But none of that mattered!  As soon the Queen was in the hands of the droids!  Her handmaidens, her captain of the Guard, and several of her royal guards were brought into a reasonably large drawing room after being disarmed and manhandled before a holoprojector.  The Niemidians were not Nute, they would not bring themselves to the planet to brag or whatever he was doing, it was probably unimportant anyway.  No, they the captains had captured the Queen, so they the captains could make the deal.  After quickly changing some things, removing the Trade Federation''s name from some places, and putting their name in others, removing some clauses, adding many more, it was done!  And it was ''perfect''!  Now they just had to get the Queen to sign it!


    Captain Dool Brehg appeared on the holoprojector, he was the captain of the lead trade ship in Nute Gunrays absence and therefore had the right!  He was also first, as all the other captains holoprojections were put on hold...  "You failed to uphold the old treaty your highness, so we will sign a new treaty!"  Said Captain Dool.  "Your ''treaty'' was a slave contract!  And I will never sign a treaty with the Trade Federation again!"  Said Queen Amidala.  Dool hid a smile as she didn''t say she wouldn''t sign a treaty with him.  He just had to amend the contract further, he was sure that he could do something before the Viceroy returned, and then it would be moot.  It was fine now, everything was in place, he had all the time in the world, but why would he spend it?


    "You have one hour to sign the treaty!  If you do not sign the treaty in one hour I will kill someone close to you."  Captain Dool stated.  Of course, he did not refer to ''which'' treaty as he and his fellow captains were already amending and adding clauses.  There was no point in looking back now, and who knew how long the Viceroy would take.  He had already been gone for a day and a half, must have found a local Naboo woman he liked.  To be honest, Captain Dool was jealous, he wasn''t into humans, but he could always add to his collection, his Twi''lek was probably getting lonely, but with only 1000 square meters to his room it was too small for any of his others.


    The hour soon passed, it was time and the Queen still hadn''t signed the treaty.  We would see how strong she was when her resistance killed those before her eyes!  It was a tactic that always worked!  He saw it in a holodrama!  "It is time my Queen.  We shall see how strong you are when the life of those who trusted you drains before your very eyes!"  He said, he always wanted to play a villain, or a hero.  Obviously when they play him in the movie he will be the hero, but he will admit to himself right now he is the villain.  It was just work, there was nothing he could do about it but collect his pay.  He was already counting the ''indentured servants'' he could buy when he next swung by Hutt space.


    "I will not enslave my people to you Trade Federation!  Not again, the Republic will not stand for this!"  Said Queen Amidala.  "I''m afraid my Queen, that in this it is the Trade Federation that the Republic stands for!"  Captain Dool gave the order for the droids to pick someone other than the Queen at random and fire...


    But the droid fell into pieces.  Oh right, the Jedi!  How could he forget!  He was about to order the droids to fire when the he noticed a blade traveling through his projection "Oh de..." he got out before his projection was cut in half and terminated.  The droids realized that this wasn''t right and opened fire anyway, but they opened fire at the Jedi.  The Jedi who were right now in the middle of the droids, oh wait now they weren''t... too late.


    Captain Dool, safe thankfully back on the flagship, he may have patted himself down a couple of times, realized that things were not going his way.  He quickly ordered more droids into the palace, that will solve his problems!  Soon after a large swath of droids were quickly killed all the way to the royal hangers which had been locked down.  Noting that they were probably going to steal a ship which he rightfully owned!  Luckily he already had Vulture droids on patrol, he would not thank Nute Gunray for forcing him to keep them there, or admit that bringing the droids back was probably a silly decision.  Still there was no way... The royal cruiser, a space yacht blew past the vulture droids like they weren''t even there.  Even he could tell there was no way that they could catch up.


    "Release more droids!  And send the ones we have down to take that space yacht!"  yelled Captain Dool.  More droids poured out of the vessel, and the ones already on near patrol in case something got passed Theeds defenses launched toward the yacht... and quickly passed.  Luckily the computers were able to start predicting and creating and algorithm of the vessel and it''s capabilities, but not fast enough.  While the damage was piling up, and he could see several astromech droids out and about making repairs, the ship was still moving like the sleek rocket that it was.


    "Bring your vessels in close and release all your droids!"  ordered Captain Dool to the other nearby blockade vessels.  The other 4 that formed up his facing had already moved in, but those vessels of other facings didn''t see the need to move their ships in and help Dool do his job, there was just no glory in it, no glory meant no profits!


    "Who are you to order us?  <i>Captain</i> Dool?  You are no admiral and no viceroy!"  sneered a captain of one of the nearer vessels.  "Are you going to explain to the viceroy how we failed our only job on this backward planet?!  Launch. all. the. droids!"  He cowed the other Niemidian captains.  They did as he said, and launched their droids while also closing in the ranks of their ships to further blockade Theed.  This left their own areas more open, but there was little need if they couldn''t blockade Theed, the capital.


    Of course, it was far too little too late.  The had hit an engine, and the hull was further carbonized, but the little blue droid that could did, and the hyper drive was fixed.  Would it be enough?  Probably, to get them to Tatooine but not further.  The ship was dead on the planet, well unless they could get parts, but where would they get the parts for that?


    Oh and of course, I Nute Gunray had just finished up negotiations.  Not only was the deal highly favorable, above and beyond what had ever been considered, but it benefitted both parties, Trade Federation and Gungun at least, immensely as well.  So of course the first thing I did was call up to my flagship.


    "Uh, Captain, you have a call incoming, sir."  Captain Dool was of course, not ready for a call.  "Put them on hold, while I... I think of something... And turn up the gravity!"  He stated.  If that Pissant of a viceroy could rack up the fuel costs to turn up the gravity a little just because of the Niemidian''s natural reflexs then so could he!  "Uh captain, sir, I don''t think we can ignore this call..." The comms officer didn''t get to finish that sentence as the captain rounded on Him screaming "I am the captain of this ship I will ignore..." The captain didn''t get to finish that sentence as the holoprojector sprung to life with a life sized image and the comms officer quietly mumbled "... It''s the viceroy..."


    I had a pleasant smile on my face when I forced my way through the holocall.  I didn''t really care what was happening on the ship, as I would have to be apprised of it anyways, as long as they weren''t having an orgy or something there was nothing that I really minded.  "So Captain Dool, where is my Queen?"  I asked the pale faced captain... Hmm, that can''t be good, where they actually having that orgy and I wasn''t invited?

 Shai-Hulud

    "Fire Everything!"  Screamed Captain Dool.  "But sir, we already have Theed, that is a waste of profits!"  Stated a random Niemidian.  "Not at the captiol you fool!  At the viceroy!  Launch an orbital bombardment!"  Captain Dool screamed.  Of course, I was still on the call with him.  But he didn''t notice as I input a few commands, the Trade Federation did not take well to Captains trying to take their ships, even if said captains personally owned them, The Subscription Plans!


    "I believe that is enough Captain Dool Brehg, you are relieved of command."  I stated, already tired of this charade.  "Fools, we must kill him now and lay the blame for this failure at his feet or we will be liquidated!"  The captain said.  I stopped inputing commands just long enough if any other captains took up his offer.  Not that it would help him.


    In the end three captains joined him, two abstained and two sought to defend me, with others moving in to do so, but by then it would be too late.  Of course, regardless those that sought to defend me would be rewarded for their loyalty, as former captain Brehg would soon find out, after relieving the weapons officer of his duties...


    "Fire damn you!"  Dool Brehg screamed at the weapons control consol.  Never mind that the turbolasers would not have actually had the punch to hit all the way here without being calibrated.  I decided to step in when he and other officers started to panic and try to shoot the consols...


    "I believe that is enough Mr. Brehg, you will be relieved to the brig.  Security take him away!"  I stated, "Roger, Roger." the B1s replied.  Brehg was simply lucky that the B1s that were on station where those with stunners and not blasters.  B1s were simply so cheap that they were given one or the other and not both.  Honestly, if they ever did run out of ammo it would almost be better to use them as disposable walking grenades, it would certainly be cheaper than a regular one.


    Of course, I was never in danger.  Being a chair in the Trade Federation meant I had a locator on me, that meant that the Trade Federation would use anything in its power to rescue me, but the ships were literally incapable of firing on me, and I had just issued command codes to directly take control and disable the vessels under Brehg.  I soon gave control to acting captains under my control and the situation resolved itself.  But the captain had been an idiot.  I had given the captain strict direct orders, and he had suffered a case of efficient inefficiency.  Which in itself was stupid.  While the captain was right in that the trade federation would have punished him, it would have also punished me for giving him unequitable orders, that effect profit lines.  He could have used this as an excuse to <i></i> to replace me, I certainly had success with this tactic as old Nute.


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    Now here I am, the queen is off who knows where, and, it doesn''t matter now does it?  But it was far too soon, and I had a lot of work to do.  Calling for my ship I lifted off to oversee the ''asset acquisition'' and ''repossession of investments''.  By the time the queen came back to Naboo there would be no Naboo.  I suppose I could leave the Gungun the trees though, they were pretty trees.  **


    --------------


    Overseeing processing and estimations of ''stock and indentures'' was disheartening.  Oh sure, it was probably better for them then having them all shot, and had better optics at my upcoming court date.  But it was still highly inefficient.  Droids could do anything these indentures, especially children, could do better, and faster, and more efficiently.  Still, I needed them off planet, and the best way to do that would be to trade them to the Hutts, cough, sell indentured worker contracts to perspective buyers.  Luckily I had a trade fleet to facilitate this not trading of slaves, how convenient.  Also convenient?  None of the Niemidians even so much as made a peep, most were even supportive of the idea and the profits it would bring.  I had a feeling the slave stock market was going to crash in Hutt space in the nearish future.


    "No not them!"  I screamed at a droid as it was loading up a family.  Oh I had plans for them.  Part of what I was doing was determining who should be a simple work slave, these did not need their families sold with them, and those that were worth more happily slaving away while their family was held over some dramatic pit filled with something lethal.  However, these I had something special for.  The nobles and the political families would be separated further because, to be honest, they held no real value outside of ransom.  But I was here in the first place for something more than profits.  Of course, that in itself is heretical to the Niemidians, though acceptable for what I stood to gain, still would be controversial though.


    And that was when I received word from my master that Mual had failed.


    **  Again, I do not approve of slavery, it is a part of star wars, and is a common plot device <i>for</i> it''s well known evilness tho.  Also, a well known plot device for the hypocrisy of the ruling sides in star wars because almost all of them are ''anti-slavery'' and none of them do anything about it but waste breath.

 6: Slave Girls and the price of Corellien Corvettes

    Faking being scared wasn''t really all that hard when faced with the sith, but I knew how things were going to play out from here.  Though what had happened was interesting since it had played out very differently than in the movies without actually changing anything.  For example, the Naboo royal cruiser,</a> which was unarmed, but a Hutt would pay a royal ransom for, not that Watto would know, but also yeah he did...  Was almost permanently grounded.  It would be a year without a tow before the vessel could get back up and running after what had happened to the left engine and it''s housing.  If it wasn''t for the royal chromium alloy the ship would have been completely destroyed.  The mix had barely any chromium in the alloy but there was a reason why all the luxurious and powerful Naboo craft had that shiny silver exterior**.


    Still, the damage was so great that the cruiser less landed and more fell with style.  If it didn''t have repulsers installed it would have been just another wreck on Tatooine.  But they did, and instead of taking the Naboo cruiser, they gained a yt-1300 freighter</a>.  This was enough for a couple of handmaidens, the Pilot, guard Captain Panaka, Padme, the two jedi, and Anikan... barely.  Oh that reminded me, I needed to purchase Shmi... discreetly of course.  As one might expect, they won the pod race, but this time Amidala bet herself as a slave.  This only gained Anikan and Shmi was kept as a slave.  Sidious was not yet interested in <i>why</i> they had grabbed up a slave and looked at me awkwardly when I had asked.  I played it of as interested curiosity as to why they would jeopardize themselves for one and Sidious waved it away as jedi compassion.


    So now they were racing up the trade run***.  Still, this all falls into Sidious plans.  While it would be good if the queen was dead, so he could pin it all on the Trade Fed and make them look even worse, it was of no consequence.  The Jedi were no help either, had Qui Gon Jin actually killed the Sith, the council would have declared the Sith order dead again and gone on with their lives.  Honestly, with how many with there are running around he was amazed, sure they were not ''true'' sith, but can anyone really claim that after the Jedi bombed a species out of existence?**


    I knew I had time now, it would be six months to a year before the queen would make her last stand after returning and Anikan magically blows up my command ship.  Or at least it should happen that way, however there were many surprises in store.  For starters I had all the incompetent captains, that were not on ships I own, off trading slaves to the Hutts.  It might have seemed like I had given them the better deal, after all they were able to make side deals, however that was not the case.  All of the captains that were left were making a base profit off of shares on all profits made on the venture.  This was going to kill the quarters of the captains that left, and in Niemidia that wasn''t simply a humiliation.  I would own those vessels before they were even able to make five trips, earning me new vessels to add to my growing fleet.


    In the Trade Federation loss was acceptable so long as profits flowed.  The Trade Federation and the Niemidians were younger than the IGBC, but they still understood general success.  This meant that they would prefer you surrendered a frigate over actually damaging it provided that it was ransomed back at a reasonable rate.  Of course, you might not get your commission back, or you might find yourself with a promotion, it was all about your connection.  I knew that was good for the trade fleet, but it was terrible for the military core, so I was busy working on making that diamond hard core.


    Meanwhile various ships in my fleet were being retrofitted as ''battleships''.  Quite literally, these ships were having the Rasun Reformations as their design principle.  I wanted to throw this out, but we still had years to work within these rules.  So instead I had them draw up designs for after the Rasun Reformations were thrown out.  Still, what you ended up with was a ''battleship'' that was outgunned by the munifecents it was being escorted by, which was in turn outgunned by the average pirate that could get to that class.  All of which flowed through Hutt space where they still built the super massive turbolasers without the restrictions the republic had placed upon itself.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Of course, I was amazed that it lasted for a thousand years.  I knew of several races and species that would tear through the republic and even the core, especially from the core, in the coming years without an actual fleet.  Some would say it was because of the war that attracted them, I would blame the story maker***.  I wouldn''t be surprised is Naboo plopped out some ancient sith horror, or the entire planet just became a monster, all to save it''s precious heroes.  Meanwhile old Nute died, quite randomly and quietly in the clone wars.  Maybe he lost his force halo at that time, I was given that he was a pawn the whole time and thus did not have one in the first place.  This meant I did not have one.


    All wasn''t lost however, the thing about having all the Supermans running around was that a little bit of cryptonight actually killed them.  As opposed to making them stronger, giving them new powers and just about anything else that was not actually killing them.  It honestly made me wonder how the Kryptonians actually died.  Was it the kryptonight, or did superman go back in time and murder them all, even the babies in the crib?  Probably didn''t strangle them with their own umbilicals, but her really was ''capable of anything''...


    Now, Nute didn''t have a halo, but Sidious does, and he has the Sigurd halo.  His only vulnerability is the chosen one and guess what...  But that doesn''t mean Vador can''t make up his mind a bit earlier than he did.  Though, it would mean that Palpatine''s whole clone thing would have likely succeeded.  And since there were like 10 or 20 clones... Yeah, the man just wouldn''t die!...


    But that was a distant thing.  Near future I would have to deal with the chosen one himself.  There would be no Gungun army for the little queen, but why would she need one?  She had an Anikan.  It just meant that they would perform more of an assassins creed vs earth defense force.  Still, I had to get rid of some weaknesses.  Or did I?  Sidious wanted a pet, well then I would be the most spoiled of all.  I had been working on making the siege a success, but maybe I shouldn''t.  A man without shoes and all that...


    ** So, the reason why the Naboo stuff was all shiny was because it was made with precious or semi-precious metals.  These metals did actually have very good armor capabilities, and made good armor, because star wars.  This, and the fact that the Naboo vessel was a cruiser and not a common freighter meant it was worth <i>much</i> more than a few slaves, but rather possibly a few slave villages.  After all, slaves were used as disposable labor when it would be <i>too</i> expensive to use <i>disposable</i> droids.  Now, there could be something to be said about the value of a slave in Hutt space because there was actually market value and stuff instead of simple, slave #s.  Still, there are a lot of holes in this particular arc, and yes it was written by GL.  The only thing I can think of that Watto could even be talking about is the value of the part and still, he could have fixed up the cruiser and made bank easy to a Hutt.


    ** So yeah, the Pias Dia era of the Jedi got super xenophobic and went on a ''righteous purge'' and murdered a bunch of xenos species.  Of course, none of those species were destroyed as completely as the sith species.  There''s some explanation of it, and some pandering, but yeah, even the light side can go full ''kill all humans''... wait...


    *** So I tried to look up what trade routes Naboo is on and what ones they would be using coreward, didn''t go so well.  I''m just assuming it''s the ''old trade federation route'', which I''m shortening to trade run.  Anybody that''s more weaboo about starwars then me that can correct me or give me more details about it, that would be great...  Also wonder why there isn''t an interactive SW map yet, particularly one for free and not some book some dude wrote...  Because I''m not paying for something I''m writing for free, lol!


    ***  Good ol'' GL personified.  I imagine the ''intellect'' of the force as two GLs playing a weird star was multidimensional chess/table top.  The pieces might be unique, but their classes are all the same, and they both geek out like kids saying ''Mine can do this, fly, and shoot lasers out of it''s eyes!'' and the other goes ''Nuh uh!  That''s against the rules!  So you can''t do it and it didn''t happen!''  then the other goes starts to cry and says ''It is too part of the rules!  Because I said so and I''m telling!''  then the other yells back ''Well Fine!  Then mine has wind breath, can teleport, and can see the past present and future!''  This last one starts the argument again, only reverses the roles.  Technically, the two would be the light and dark of the force, realistically neither truly matters, they both want chaos and a good story to tell.

 chapter 7, Politics, and polite licking.

    I had originally moved all of my most competents into the fleet, I now had to slowly roll them out.  It wasn''t a bad thing.  I just implemented a schedule.  The competent military commanders where still dedicated traders, while I would need a military core, I would also need a military spirit.  That meant that ALL of my captains and most of my fleet was expendable.  Luckily this venture was insured... in more than one way.  I stopped trying to remove critical failures and consolidated them into one reinforced block.  When the command ship exploded everything would stop.  However, that didn''t mean I wanted to lose ships, the two other lucrehulks</a>** would be able to leave.  I also had two of the new munificents</a>.


    I loved and hated these beautiful things.  While these early drafts only had oversized heavy turbolasers instead of the spinal mounted ultra heavy turbolasers they could still tear through a tagge battlecruiser</a>** in a small fleet.  But they weren''t designed for their purpose.  They made absolutely terrible patrol craft.  Oh sure, when faced with that kind of heavy firepower any ship would piss it''s pants and turn around, but it was supposed to be a heavy escort.  And it made a terrible escort when you had to turn and face every threat head on, let alone chase them down.  No, these were dedicated raiders.  Which made their roles in the coming war all the more stupid because they were never used as such.  I did not look forward to what people would use the providence</a> for...


    Since I had all the time in the world, and absolutely none, I decided to start throwing designs around.  I actually did like the munificents spinal mounted up classed turbolasers.  However, they did not make a good frigate, at least as an escort.  So I didn''t start building a frigate for an escort.  Instead I started with the hammerhead</a>**.  This was a design that had lasted 4 thousand years.  Mostly because the Corellions had not made the CR70 or CR90s to replace them.  These vessels, and their empire mirrors, because Kuat would not admit that anything that was not their design was good, would dominate the poor old ship.  But I did not have the specs for them, because well, they weren''t built yet.  But I could update the hammerhead by removing it''s distinctive hammer head design.  Not only was the Design old, but just updating the ships systems would remove a lot of the necessary redundancy and streamline the design, shrinking the command area, and removing the need for the above and below deck.


    I decided to take the Munificent pilot house and pretty much drag and drop.  This left the command exposed, so I added heavy blaster shutters.  Ironically, when these blast shutters were down, the ship could ram into a capitol ships armor and bypass it all together, a dagger to the hammer... head... I was not going to call it the daggerhead!  now the only problem was the spinal mounted guns.  There would be no point in a redesign if I didn''t add heavy blasters to a cruiser of all things!  But if the guns were open they would be vulnerable.  Thinking about the blaster shutters I already had, I decided to make the whole thing popup.  This mean that the ship would be heavily armored when it was charging headfirst into blaster fire, and could sit back and snipe at range.  This also skirted the reforms since, what they didn''t know, couldn''t be reported...


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    I then realized I was stupid, and added several ports on the pilothouse.  This allowed boarders, particularly my B1s to simply deploy into another ship.  But under the pilothouse would be two sets of deployable ''vampire fangs'' that my boarders could deploy from.  What I ended up with looked like a goofball vampire, that was upguned, but couldn''t shoot out it''s way from a furball if all the fighters lined up in front of it single file.  It was ironic that my escort would need an escort, but it was never a lack of fighters the Trade Federation needed.  Deciding to put credits where my mouth is I put the councilor class engines on, they were cheep, available, and functioned better than the hammerhead engines, updated the power plant too, and then added a small external hanger.  It would do for anything but droids, couldn''t even fit the port for a pilot to drop in, and looked more like a strange missile launcher with a door on front, but it would do for fighter support.


    I was still playing around with the design to make it functional when my meeting was approved.  I decided to visit the IGBC while I had the time.  It might be very un-Niemidian to not count the profits in hand, but I had business to take care of.  I needed to get into contact with Plagueis</a>, Sidious''s master.  However, I didn''t know who he was.  I did know that his secret identity was high up in the IGBC however.  So it was a simple matter, bungle some negotiations in the IGBC and see what happens.  Sidious only killed his master because he drugged him with some potent wine, and killed him in his sleep after he let his guard down because Sidious completed a major milestone in ''the grand plan''.


    I was pleasantly surprised when I had a meeting with one Hugo Demask!  He is a big shot in the IGBC, one of 5 chair members, and worth more than several entire sectors of the outer rim combined!


    **  Lucrehulks were originally unarmed/disarmed, then they were armed with a very small compliment of weapons less than the prototype munificents.  The wookieepedia page doesn''t reflect this design history.  Though the lucrehulks remained underarmed throughout the war even when they went full battleship, and even the full battleship refits that removed the exterior carrier space yet still had plenty of internal space to spare.


    **  The Wookieepedia page doesn''t really do this ship justice.  I like the non-canon mods for star wars: empires at war, forces of corruption, specifically the republic at war mod, which I will base a lot of ships off of.  Unfortunately, there isn''t a wiki for the clone wars era mod, only the waring states era mod.  If you want to see the clone wars canon appearance of the tagge battlecruiser you can look it up, it''s the goopy star destroyer with the cylinder on top, can''t miss it.  But, this is a ship that could take on an entire fleet, even pre full galactic civil war refit.


    **  So, this is the design that was around twoish eras from the clone wars.  However, there is a joke in the starship design industry that does ''At least it''s not designing another hammerhead''.  And this is because the hammerhead has been around and updated for 4k+ years.  In other words, even though it says it''s a new design, it is not, just the latest version that is set 40-70 years into the future.

 chapter 8 Friends in dark places

    Hugo Demask wouldn''t normally come out to meet a mere viceroy of the Trade Federation normally.  As a chair on one of the oldest corporations, certainly amongst the megacorps, he didn''t need to meet these nobodies.  Of course, when the force itself tells him that it is dire that he meet an individual, he listens.  Hugo didn''t know what could have caused it, though with the first steps of the Grand Plan coming to fruition there were many aspects of ''danger'' that could be.  Of course, there were many other threats in the universe, Sidious had even stated something about extra-galactic invaders...


    Still, this did not seam to be anything to do with him, these were all things for Sidious to worry about.  That poor fool, he was so focused on the Grand Plan that he never truly grasped his focus on immortality was for him!  Sidious was so young, at best he merely had 130 years left!  Meanwhile even after living for over 300 years** Hugo Demask still wasn''t even middle aged yet.


    The old Nute in me was giddy as a school girl.  This was THE Hugo Demask, one of the chairs for THE IGBC!  New Nute was just trying to hold on so they didn''t embarrass us in front of such an important figure.  "Ahh, hello!  When they stated that I would be meeting with and executive I didn''t realize it would be you!" I said, wincing internally at my peppiness.  And my mood instantly took a nosedive when I could see on his face that talking to me was like talking to the bug in your salad.


    "Ahh, no.  You will not be meeting with me."  He said.


    "Oh, sorry, I, I didn''t mean to interrupt you on your way!  I will..."  I started to say.  But he held up his hand to get me to shut up.  "I didn''t say I hadn''t come to meet you.  I was simply wondering why you were here.  We corporations, especially those of a certain caliber, must stick together.  There are, certain leeways and privileges that we allow each other, that other august personages wouldn''t be allowed."  He stated.


    "Ahh, yes, yes!  Of course!... No, well it is a bit of a private matter... However!  There is nothing that prevents me from discussing it with you of course! No, well, I simply wish to insure certain assets, secure some loans, and move some money!  Nothing too dangerous, I assure you!"  I stated, though my thoughts said I was about to push a succor into a sure lose.  Hugo Demask clearly saw through my thoughts, which was weird, because while Niemidians were sleezy, nobody could see through a skilled business mask, they only saw what you wanted them too, which was what they thought they were seeing.  But it was almost like he was reading my inner thoughts.


    Hugo could read this sleemo''s thoughts like a book, and yet he could not, there was more there if he pushed, but that would dull this son of a Hutt''s perception, which would be notable.  No, it was not worth his time to read too deeply into a disposable bug.  However, he remembered now, talking to this used Wookie diaper, that both would serve there purpose and then be disposed of.  Yet, it did not seem like that would be the case... which was not a part of the Grand Plan...


    Apparently this Hutt oil, wanted to insure his ships against loss.  This would be considerable considering where most of them were.  The ones that were a part of the trade lanes, shipping his ill gotten gains were one thing, as long as they were outside of Naboo... However, that didn''t seam to be the case, no he wanted to insure <i>all</i> of them.  He should know that the use of ships in illegal practices would void the contract before the flimsi was signed!  Yet, he was assured that he would get a significant payout.  Then there was the assets, he wanted to sign a 30 year loan on several assets, mostly on those in the core, but also ships and stations.  He didn''t even own several of these, and looking some even actually belonged to his alter ego, even if used under his name.  In particular, he saw a few key research stations, yet it seemed as if ownership of them was ''assured'' even though Plagious would never let the research there fall into the wrong hands, like ignorant jedi...


    No, looking around, there were many assets that were his, that were ''going to fall'' into this Corellion puke stain''s hands.  Of course, Hugo Demask wouldn''t know about these assets, they ''weren''t his'', but Plagious?  No, he had to rethink things.  He had to rethink everything.  He turned his attention back to this walking pustule.  Looking at it, even this money he was moving, almost all of it wasn''t even his.  Not that he wasn''t moving a significant portion of his assets around.  But the vast majority was Trade Federation, including a not so insignificant portion of their stock, which he didn''t own or oversee.  Hugo Demask could see that, and would instantly void most of this, and then turn him over to the authorities for the Trade Federation to deal with in a back ally somewhere.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    But, this societal tumor had brought him a timely warning, and Plagious was not one to kill the force''s messengers, no matter how much he wanted too.  But he hadn''t killed someone in anger for years, at least a decade or two!  No, that was for the hypocritical Jedi!  So while excising him would be doing society a favor, cancer always has a tendency to come back, there were plenty more.


    Hmm, perhaps this Sulustian burning trash heap was worth investing the minimum effort into.  "Oh no, I simply wanted to have a nice chat.  After all, you don''t know what kind of juicy gossip you can get from those, outside your influence.  Here, this is my contact information, I hope you know what to do with it.  And if there is anything you need from me, feel free to send me a message!  It''s always good to have more friends!"  Stated Hugo.


    I quickly flipped open my holocom receiving the information from Hugo Demask.  This information might as well be pure Aurum!  Of course, I knew what his statement was saying.  Don''t bother me unless it''s something truly important and valuable, and as a mere viceroy I wouldn''t have anything truly valuable for him.  Even the probably illicit dealings I was about to have were a drop in the bucket for him.  The entire Trade Federation wasn''t even truly worth his time, while on paper the Trade Federation equaled the IGBC at least in assets when including space ships, the foundation simply wasn''t there.  This is why the IGBC survived into the waring states period, but not the Fed.


    Of course, that wasn''t the most important bit.  He had called me a friend!  This was important.  Seemingly the least important aspect, by calling me a friend I could now state I was his friend.  This meant I had contacts with people in high places.  Still, I wouldn''t be a mere viceroy for much longer, and I still had to ''warn'' Plagious.  I was sure that he would understand the implications once he saw the transfers I was making, but he wouldn''t necessarily review every last trade deal.  This just simply would float across his desk because it involved assets that Sidious had kept hidden under Nute.


    I know though, that these assets were going to lose value or be destroyed entirely soon, simply to satisfy the republics ego.  This meant I had to get rid of them like a burning house on the open market, the faster it was sold the less my own money burned.  Not that I was using my own money, no.  This was the beauty of it, it was only legal after the fact.  Once the events hit, and the Republic took control of the assets, or destroyed them, these contracts, particularly the loans, would be void.  This would get the IGBCs undies in a wedgy and they would not allow something as small as the Galactic Republic to give them a wedgy.  But there wasn''t much they could do, this was one thing that couldn''t be solved by money.  This would then force the IGBC firmly into my camp, at least on the surface.


    Sidious would be furious, for a lot of reasons, none of them he could fault me for.  But there was nothing he could do here, after all, this furthered our plans right?  Only, it outright destroyed one of his great plays altogether while furthering me greatly.  But he likely wouldn''t find out until he had already supported me through this mess.  Not that it would hurt his chancellorship, no, it would support it!  That was why he would be so angry, on the surface it helped him even more than me.  It was that other play being destroyed that set him back twice as much, or more.


    It wasn''t simply Plagious being in play that it hurt.  Palpatine was going to be forced firmly into camps that would build his powerbase.  This meant that as chancellor he would have a leg up over what he should be.  On the surface that was great, but Sidious did best as a fence sitter.  Best to let the plebs fight it out for king humpty dumpty.  However, he wouldn''t be able to do that.  By solidifying his powerbase he could no longer play the field against each other, shutting off his access to closed clandestine meetings... at least for a time.  I had no doubts that he would rebuild all of those relationships from scratch if he must, but it set him back by years.  Years I could dearly use in a ongoing PUB game I had just started...


    ** So, due to healthcare and other advances humans can live up to 200 years in SW.  But Muun, which is Plagious live 500-700 years.  Neither of these include Jedi which can live theoretically eternally with force powers, though for the Jedi it depends on how deeply they ''channel'' the force, becoming little more than a conduit.  While Sith simply stay at peak physical fitness for longer even when they age.

 chapter 9 Alls fair in internal corporate warfare

    Those bastards had screwed him, and screwed him hard!  Nute Gunray had several important meeting to attend to, not to mention all of the other stuff to manage, yet what did they do?  Send him on an ''important'' trade mission to Hutt space, Hutt space!  Those were the missions that disposable assets went on.  Those were the mission that the powerful kept at capitol ship length, bristling with turbolasers, between themselves and the Hutts.  And here he was, being shipped off into Hutt space while he had to cancel on meetings with important individuals like the IGBC, and the Commerce Guild.


    He had complained to Sidious, but they seemed unbothered.  It wasn''t surprising, the viceroy was ironically his only asset in the Trade Federation, at least that high up.  This wasn''t going to look good in his coming court dates.  At least he could dump all the slaves and all the cultural artifacts.  He can honestly say that he didn''t deal in ''slavery'' or the ''misappropriation of cultural artifacts''.  Not to mention all the other small things he was dumping into Hutt space.


    Of course, to make matters worse, he had to use Gazanti class smugglers</a> to dump all those items into Hutt space.  He had to get rid of them fast, and he was burning credits on the deal.  Normally he might have been a little more scrupulous about what where when, but he needed thing shipped now, even at a... *gasp*... deficit!


    ----------


    I made my way to Hutt space in my sheathipede class shuttle</a>***.  I realized that my trap was going to place it''s jaws on me.  When this was all over I was going to be interviewed and accused of different things, having to defend myself in court.  Going to Hutt space was REALLY not a good look for me.  Going to Hutt space as someone as important as myself, was even MORE of not a good look.  Going to Hutt space after I had just sold a bunch of slaves, sorry indentures?  While I held too much power to be thrown in jail when I landed back on Curescant, that wouldn''t protect me when the chips were down.  And even though I could easily pay my way out of it, even with what I have, I might wish I stayed in jail when my ''associates'' get a hold of me.  Safer with the murderers and bounty hunters.


    I needed to burry the trail.   That ended up being simple enough.  A quick call to the Curescant diplomatic office later and I was an official diplomat for the republic, and thus ''above'' bribes.  Not that any of these Hutts except the greatest would be able to offer me anything anyway.  Oh, they will try, even so forcing such things into my hands. But, I was a viceroy of the trade federation, anything they could get their dirty hands on, I could easily buy and have delivered.  No, anything they bribed me with would go straight to the republic... mostly.  If that republic was the Trade Federation.


    No, it wasn''t the bribes that got me, I could easily claim that was Hutt culture and therefore take my due officially now.  It was how easy it was to become a diplomat.  I suppose it had more to do with the fact I was heading to Hutt space and was a qualified businessman.  Nobody wanted to go to Hutt space on diplomatic missions, who knew?  The fact that my seathipede shuttle was unarmed only helped matters, because why would we arm the standard Fed personnel transport?  It made me want to cry, but I understood why.  Instead I had cooked up some removable weapon mounts.  Easily visible would be that the weapons are removed, or added.


    And, guess what?  As soon as I hit Hutt space there was a blockade of 5 fighters and an upguned freighter as a gunboat, surprise surprise.  Well, they knew I was coming.  However, they couldn''t catch up to me before I left the system thankfully, though there calls of "Surender viceroy!" over the coms made it obvious what they were after.


    But that didn''t mean I would get lucky in every system.  So when three systems in, as I was about to jump to hyperspace... or well, my pilot droid was... and was contacted by a small fleet jumping into the system... right on top of me.  Luckily they were far enough away <i>not</i> to run into me.  Unfortunately they were more then close enough to file my ship full of blaster fire.


    They did not ask me to power down my engines, but instead stated that they were from The Great Mordello the Hutt.  He wasn''t someone I heard of from the series, but I knew who he was, a council member from one of the many Hutt councils.  He just happened to be one of the Hutts I was going to meet.  Another thing was that according to unwritten Hutt law, you could imply you were from another Hutt faction, even say it outside of Hutt space.  But while in Hutt space you didn''t state you were from someone else''s faction unless you wanted to be obliterated from all sides.  And considering that Mordello had actual influence in the Hutt Cartels, it was <i>highly</i> unlikely that another Hutt, even a young Hutt, would be using his name.


    So, I command the droid to keep the hyperdrive ready, but not activate it.  I wanted to hear them out, hopefully before they volleyed a round of turbolasers at my ship.  Looking at the ships arrayed in front of me I see a light minstrel</a> as well as an HH-87 star hopper</a> </a>class fighter leading a half squadron of  morningstar type-b</a> with a single c type variant mixed in.  As well as a mixed full squadron, with multiple variants, including the iconic Z-95</a>** to the HWK-290</a> a light freighter that when upgunned doubles as a fighter.


    While I was relatively sure that no Hutts were flying in this escort, because it was an escort and therefore beneath them, several of these were iconic Hutt ships that I knew they did fly.  Though mostly, the Hutts saw star fighters as more powerful escape pods that they could get away with.


    The Hutt vessels arrayed themselves around me very quickly, but none actually took my rear around my engines.  While Hyperspace drives punched holes into reality, they needed the engines to actually move through that hole.  So it was reassuring that none of these vessels even attempted it.  That was likely the point.  Listening to the open chatter, or the chatter that they didn''t think was open, but even now the Trade Federation had the best com gear, and thus the best e-war gear.  They seemed to think that this was beneath them, but decided to abandon their usual tactics, which Nute was pretty sure were just piracy.  They seemed to be bummed out enough about not shaving a ''fat bantha'' anyway...<hr>


    Nute''s Sheathopede dodged some more turbolaser fire as another one of the more ambitious Hutt spawn launched their fighters at him.  Most just turned around at the name of his protector... now that he had them.  The Republic didn''t send its diplomatic vessels into Hutt space because The Will Get Shot At.  And Republic law stated that a diplomatic vessel must be unarmed.  The Republic Red is enough to deter them!... Yeah, that doesn''t go over so well in Hutt space.  Luckily, the Trade Federation is not immune to paying dues *cough* bribes, to... incentives good trade deals.  So long as they make money, they do not mind, but if it is no longer lucrative, they will leave you high and dry, while you have become dependent on their trade.


    It wasn''t eve the Trade Union''s fault that all of the local traders went away, they were kind of like a more aggressive walmart, which in itself is kind of impressive.


    So finding myself having to take controls from another droid so that I can guide my pilot is... tragic really.  I could obviously pilot the ship, but my reactions would be slower and less accurate.  However, a droid cannot predict or react to variables well.  That is why I am currently telling it what they are.  Still, I''m pretty sure these board pirates on babysitting duty are letting them scrape my hull.  They should at least know that if I die that so will they, and much worse then they can imagine as well.  But that doesn''t stop them from letting the occasional starfighter through.  As another Z-95 dives through the safety cordon and blasts my shields, I know that I need to do something, or these assholes will let my ship get damaged, or even explode.


    Another starfighter, I can''t tell the make, cheap and unreliable is probably the name.  Annoyed at the growing incompetence and rampant bullying of my escort I make a snap decision.  I order my droid to dive under the minstrel.  This has an instant effect as now the minstrel doubles it''s fire and the other ships on escort start to actually pay attention.  It was fine when my ship was getting the paint scrapped, but if they messed up one of Mordello''s hulls they would have to pick the body parts that would be used to repair it.  While this actually slows down the hunt on the enemy fighters, the competence increase by magnitudes.  Soon the enemy tries to run, but it is no use, not with a minstrel to gun them down as they turn their backs, and starfighters of our own to pen them in.


    Of course, just when they finish up on that side, is when another ambitious little squirt tries from the other, now that all my escorts are out of position.  I have the droid but the engine to the other side of the minstrel, just in time for a proximity alert to light up and an explosion to light up against it''s shields.


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "What the frak yu doin'' sleemo?" screams the captain of the minstrel.  There was still no real damage, but that could not have been good for the shields.  "If you did your job, I wouldn''t need to out maneuver concussion missiles</a>."  I reply.


    This seems to have really riled them up.  No sooner do I say this then more missiles fly, only they come from my side.  Soon the other squadron is wiped out, but there are even less of them on this side than the other.  If this keeps up they may need resupply.  Fighters are capable of flying down the routes, but it is either they fly long distance, or they fight, not both.  and they have been doing a lot of fighting.  Granted, that fighting is more skeet shooting, but still.


    I can''t believe I am saying this, but I can''t wait to get to Nar Shada.  Of course, Nute has been there before, but Usually that is in no less than a lucrehulk, and with no more than a few battalions of droids along for the ride.  This time I have simply brought a few specialized droids, and very few b1s.  Those that are here, are for piloting and guarding the ship, and they can only do one or the other.


    Soon enough, but not soon enough, we end up in Nar shada space.  And I am welcomed by a beautiful sight.  In front of me is a Dor''bulla class warship</a>.  Of course, it would be more intimidating if I couldn''t see that it was venting atmosphere, and that only some of it''s engines are working according to sensors.  Not that most ships would get close enough to see that most of it''s turbolasers are none functional or have even been removed.  Still, it is a beautiful, ancient, and not really functional.  But this wasn''t for me, though I can''t say I am blameless.  Nar Shada is the eye of the storm, it can be said to be safe to those that are protected in it... At least if your not weak and nameless.


    So by bringing in several lucrehulks, granted most do not actually go to Nar Shada itself, I have stirred up a Fefze hive.  However, that is nothing new, and certainly not enough to bring out this relic from a distant era.  No, there is something else going on, and I think I know what.  There just so happens to be one Count Dooku** running around here.  He just so happens to be gathering his allies and having a meeting right now.  I''m unsure yet if he knows about my involvement in his rise to power, but it would not be good if he did.


    Still, there were some power players here already, I know that a rep from the IGBC was here, amongst other such as the Commerce Guild, and a rep from my own Trade Federation.  That wasn''t even to mention several outer and mid rim senators.  The warship was for them, and to remind both them and the other Hutts that there is always a bigger fish.  I honestly just enjoyed looking at a museum piece from a time long before anything that has happened.  The Dor''bulla was built for an ancient war, to protect an even more ancient society.  Anybody that think the Hutts aren''t prepared for war are more foolish than the Republic thinking that they are.


    I left my escort behind, and we were both glad for it.  I sent them a few peggats in drinking money.  At least until I remembered that they could by an entire starship with what I had sent over.  But that was fine, I was the generous business man, and honestly, I could by a lot with my pocket change.  It might not be good to show how much I was actually worth, then again it might also be better.  Even the piracy in Hutt space was hierarchical.  They couldn''t raid anyone worth too much by themselves, and would instead have to run it by somebody else, or face the consequences.


    Now, some might think that with a high enough score they could disappear and live the life of luxury.  That might be true in the republic.  But it was impossible with the Hutts.  They WILL find you, and when they find you, you will live to regret it.  The Hutts have made a reputation of extending the lives of their victims to make them suffer more.  Still, for most victims of the Hutts they describe their lives as ''too short'' to really torture them.


    I have to say that I respect the Hutts***.  They have built an empire that while reflects the ancient Egyptians, eclipses them in every way.  It''s hard to argue when you are actually superior to your subjects in every way.  Slavery in the Republic is cruel and inconsistent.  Slavery in Hutt space is just another form of citizenship.  There is a hierarchy and an understanding, even respect.  And it would be foolish to not respect an empire that has literally lasted longer than recorded history, for any Other race...


    I move my seathopede to a landing site nearby to were my contacts are.  I will be staying here a while, but it will mostly be to cover my tracks.  Sidious is also not pleased, and the less I know what for his displeasure is going to take the better.  I have a meeting with Mordello**, but that isn''t for another week.  I will be meeting with many other people, even his own, long before that meeting.  Of course, others of my council have also made it planet side.  They will be establishing the meeting with Mordello in his open hearings first.  Honestly, we had already established the meeting beforehand, it was just another power move.  Everything on Hutt is a power move.  Because if you can''t flex as a Hutt, well...  To put it simply, they consider a Hutt without several slaves and a few droids as to be physically disabled.


    So when I brought out my B2 bodyguards and droidika obviously the first thing is I get a gun pointed at my face.  Or well, I would if I didn''t have two B2s blocking them.  I brought four of each out on this expedition.  I left the six piloting crew back on the ship.  Honestly, even OOM B1s weren''t going to do anything, and the regular B1s aren''t even a thing yet.  I''m just lucky that I have B2s and Driodika.  The B2s that I have aren''t even the ones from the series, those were designed for the war, these are just beefed up B1s, literally B TWOs...


    So it''s no surprise that the first thing that happens on Nar Shada is a guy holding a gun to my ''face'' and says "Those are some nice droids you have, be a shame if they got messed up.  Mind if I hold on to them for you, for safety purposes of course.  Hutt space can be very unsafe."


    "Thank you for the warning, but I think my muscle can handle it."  I say.  I gently nudge the droids to give this pour soul a demonstration.  Quickly, before he can react a B2 picks him up, he fires off his gun ineffectually as he flails around, shooting the ground of all things.  Another B2 disables him while the last two move in closer to me to make sure they soak up any stray bolts.  Meanwhile my droidika unfurl and make sure that nobody else in the crowd gets funny ideas.


    I pick up the gun, I recognize it as a piece of functional cheap shit.  If he had maintained the weapon it might have been useful, but he hadn''t even done that right, so instead the stun function no longer works, and there was a short that took up half the capacity of each shot, doubling the drain on the reserves.  "Pathetic, grovel, and I might grant you clemency."  I state, again, power moves.


    "Wha, what''d you say?" he announces eloquently.  I signal the B2 holding him to toss him and it does.  "Beg for you life nerf, or lose it."  I state again.


    "I, I, I, be, beg,"  He states, before trying to outdraw his holdout.  But my B2 is faster, on account of already pointing its wrist blaster at him.  While not the true canon it will become, it''s more than enough.  Instead of a canon, it is a rapid fire blaster meant to be hidden inside the ''loader bot''s arm.  He dies before he can get a shot off.  I simply have the B2 smash the pistol before someone else can think of sticking me up.  I see several homeless urchins glare at me, probably thinking of keeping or reselling the pistol.  I don''t care, they all answer to the Hutts regardless and I am their guest.  If I had to kiss up to somebody or ask for information that would be one thing, it is not.


    So I have my marines close up and lock the door on the shuttle.  It is a private hanger, and the lowlife that waylaid me wasn''t supposed to be there in the first place.  I have another group of B1s lock down the hanger, it is mine for the duration and I intend to keep it that way.  It is clear to see that there are several emplacements inside the hanger, mostly to keep the ship in, not out.  I have my B1s take over these emplacements easily.  I also see why and how they sleezy bastard got in.  There is a hidden smugglers entrance to the hanger, and it is only lightly monitored by the Hutts, easily bypassed.  Good to know, better for plausible deniability.


    I start off my trip with nowhere in particular to go, however, there are a couple of clans I would like to meet, and maybe set up a meeting with.  They mostly work with the Mundoola clan, that Mordello is a clan elder of.  These clans mostly work with electronics, such as droids, or even fighters.  Though the Hutts hardly produce anything they refurbish everything.  You could even get massive frigates or battleships from bygone eras.  These are usually then sold to pirates that need them.  There are even ships that could take down my lucrehulks for sale here.  of course, that assumes that they aren''t armed and armoured, something I hope to change...


    ** The wookie page says that it was introduced around the clone wars, but it has been used in fiction since much earlier than that.  So, I''m going to say it was produced a much longer period.  Most likely years before even the invasion of Naboo.  This makes it an old, tired, and tested design.  Likely the ARC-170 was it''s replacement as an attempt to upgun it into something between a small gunboat and a fighter, the ARC-170 included large lasers, which, even the medium lasers on the z-95 and later x-wing was considered an overpowered stretch... so, I just think that that ARC-170 just simply wasn''t used right... like a lot of star wars stuff is...


    **  I don''t know when he becomes ''Count'' Dooku instead of Jedi master Dooku.  I just know that around the time of the invasion of Naboo he was being turned by darth plagious and that there were some events around this time.  As stated the order of events are out of whack, so take them with a grain of salt.


    **  For those that don''t know, Mordello is pronounced (MordeRRo)  But the Rs are rolled and deeper, more base, humans just can''t differentiate them.  This is why it is spelled with an L which isn''t in the Hutt language.  Not that Hutts <i>couldn''t</i> speak basic, just that they prefer not to as some type of power move.


    ***  This is the opinion of the MC and doesn''t reflect on the author at all.  An example is, the Nazi did many things that increase the scientific field of today, does not mean that the author respects them, respects them for what they did, which was the stupidest way of doing science by the way, or holds any respect for the nazis or their ''scientific method''.  Some people however, DO respect them at least in parts and pieces.  I in some ways respect that if I don''t agree with it in any way.

 10 Worms live underground

    While moving through the ecumenopolis of Nar Shaddaa</a> I am waylaid by at least a dozen other people.  At first I wondered how can there be THIS many idiots living on the planet that would waylay an individual that could clearly take care of themselves, or in this particular case, is surrounded by a bunch of what are clearly battle droids.  But then I noticed something.  Each time a group of scavs would pick over the left overs, the idiots were usually young ''bangers'' that needed something to prove on someone else, and a lot of them were drunk or high.


    After the first several, and my bots identifying these scavs, I realised a simple truth.  The scavs were the ones sending in the waste.  Really, most were more than smart enough to realize I was trouble, more than trouble.  The mandalorian in the crowd was simply not somebody that I wanted to tangle with, but he instead punched the scav that was trying to ''encourage'' them to tangle with me.  This scav was then quickly pounced on by other scavs, beaten, and what little he had was taken from him.  I then saw this particular scav more and more.


    So after the third dumbass, I instead had one of my B2s loot the individual of anything truly valuable like cred sticks and his blaster.  However, I did not need a dozen blasters so I instead had the B2 stomp on it while the onlookers watched.  There were several onlookers that cried out as I did so, some even looked like they were about to charge me for it.  I simply stared them down as my droid crushed the blaster with a little pop.  This got rid of a large amount of the scavs.  It also explained why the jedi always seemed to have trouble in these parts, they could never do something like this, which only cemented with what I did next.


    I was getting tired of the jerk that thought I didn''t notice him because he was a lowly scav.  So, after the third time he started talking to what was clearly a heavily armored bounty hunter I had my droid simply shoot him where he stood.  This caused a few drawn weapons, but even the Hutt enforcer simply gave me a nod and moved along.  Here power and hierarchy was LAW.  That simple scav was flaunting it, saw he got flaunted.  This further reduced the scavs even more.  They thought I hadn''t noticed, and I did, so like the animals they were, they ran.


    Still, a few more scavs, and a lot more trendoshans who thought I had a higher ''score'' now and I was making a much better pace to my destination.  You would think that having droidika with active shields up, and a bunch of menacing, armored B2s would be enough to deter people more.  Maybe it was just the sheer amount of drugs flowing through Nar Shaddaa, or the fact that the only people unassailable were the Hutts, and even that had air quotes around it.


    On the turn through a back alley just before my destination there was a group of maybe ten thugs blocked one side of the alley.  Instantly my droids closed ranks, with the droidika shields whirring.  "It seems you have some interesting droids there, mind sharing them with us?"  asked the apparent leader.  Ahh, I had attracted the gangs then.  "This doesn''t concern one such as yourself, leave."  I stated.  I wanted to make it clear that it was far above their paygrade.


    The six thugs that came from behind made it clear that he thought differently.  This was clearly an ambush and he thought he had an advantage.  No, there were more coming in, a seventh and an eighth.  This was likely his entire gang, all coming to get one big score.  "At least tell me which of the little bastards put you up to this, so that I can kill them after you."  I stated.  They seemed to find this funny, as if they were the ones in control.  But I could see the sweat building up on most of their foreheads from the pressure, the ones that sweat at least.


    "I''m going to enjoy your sweet richie ass after we take that delicious payday offworlder.  Then..."  Someone fired, it was a surprise to everybody, as it bounced off my droidika, a stupid mistake, as yet more thugs ran around either side of the alley.  It probably saved more of this gangs life.  My droids opened fire.  B2s moved around the droidika firing with their wrist mount repeaters.  My droidika fire thier twin blaster canons obliterating those that withstood the repeaters, or ducked behind cover.  The leader himself was the first targeted.  He had dodged well, I could see why he had been the leader, probably some force bullshit.


    Their leader was not saved by whatever it was that let him survive the first round.  It was not surprise that without a lightsaber to block blaster bolts he was quickly gunned down by my B2s.  I was intrigued by the work of the B2s, the repeater seemed to be very useful, if much more wide spread and inaccurate.  As they say, you don''t need no accuracy if you spray and pray.  Soon all the would be thieves were gunned down, my B2s only having some light carbon scaring that would be buffed out later.  My droidika had done the work as shields as intended, Though they did more than that.


    Of course, this was not something that could go unnoticed by the Hutts.  Soon Hutt enforcers arraived at the scene.  The leader of the gang, still somehow breathing, unlike most of his compatriots, reached out to the scantily dressed slave girl leading the enforcers.  "Please, he attacked us, kolto..." he begged in stilted basic.  The slave girl kicked his reaching hand and stomped on it.  Then she grabbed a blaster from the ground and shot him in the head.


    I had already waved down the droids when the enforcers arrived.  Attacking a gang was one thing, but slaves and droids were owned by somebody, and usually that meant that was somebody that should not be messed with a Nar Shaddaa.  But, not everybody would get the message, yet another reason why Jedi were constantly harassed here.


    "My apologies, one such as yourself should not have to deal with these messes.  We could offer you escort, should you wish to continue to tour our beautiful Nar Shaddaa." She stated, as if there wasn''t still blood on her pumps.  It dawned on me then, the Hierarchy of Nar Shaddaa.  First was the lowest, scavs, orphans, people that didn''t exist.  Then there was the gangs and bounty hunter, with their thugs in between.  From there it was the lowest slaves and droids.  Then it was the Hutt enforcers, these were basically untouchable, everyone else had someone actively suppressing them, but Hutt enforcers were basically free.  Then there was the favored slaves, they had a hierarchy of their own, which was multiplied by their master.  And finally there was the Hutts themselves.


    It also dawned on me that this was not slavery, at least not in the way I knew it, it was a strict caste system with a little bit of meritocracy sprinkled in for flavor.  The useful survived, the useless died, and offworlders where the whetting stone to polish them all.  If they lived and succeeded they moved up in the caste, and it could take literal generations for the lesser folk... But not the Hutts.  Though, there were some exceptions.


    "While I could never say no to such a lovely thing, it isn''t so hard for me to say no to such brutes you surround yourself with.  And I would never put one such as yourself with danger, especially with protecting a useless thing such as I."  I stated.  She inclined her head and smiled, but it was  tagruta smile of a predator, not the tagruta smile of a lass being charmed.  I had understated it, she could probably bend me over her knee and my B2s as well.  Impressive since they were basically uparmed loader droids, the strongest type of droid.  The favored were all assassins, at least those that were out and about.  If it was a house slave, then maybe it had other uses such as taxes, technicians, and the like, but not her, no not her.


    "Then we will be on our way, we must protect the common and downtrodden afterall."  she said.  I nodded and watched her leave, but my eyes were not on her ass.  Ryll was a language I was very familiar with even if I didn''t have the appropriate appendages to speak it properly.  And I could understand "Follow him, but keep out of sight." easy enough.  As all of the guards dispersed, it was clear that they were all meant for me, not some upstart gang that didn''t know better.  But the best part about this was, that I was both not trying to hide, too much.  And, that I had droids with sensors built in to them.  And not just cheap sensors either.


    My droids tracking them easy enough when they tried to follow on rooftops and high vantage points got the message across quick enough, and they were unable to follow me in stealth either.  So they stuck with an obvious, if a bit rude ''patrol'' behind my back.  When they started to follow me into my destination, they suddenly jerked to a stop.  At least before they followed me into their own home base anyway.


    I was entering into Lulu the Hutt''s space.  It was an underground garage, converted into a theatre and madhouse party destination.  It was also one of the few places to buy super heavy battleship class guns.  I needed both heavy and ultraheavy turbolasers.  These blasters could be the size of a corvette or larger.  And, I wanted them on my lucrehulks.  They had nothing but space, and they were easy to armor.  In the future they could go toe to toe with a imperial star destroyer and walk away with little more than a limp.  But if I loaded them up with ultraheavy turbolasers?  There were few ships that could compare.  Though It still wouldn''t be able to take a star destroyer down by itself, it would be able to easily take a bite out of one, and make them reevaluate having that conversation in that back alley over there.


    Don''t get me wrong, they would still do it, but under protest to their commander.  Now, Lulu, would not be able to fulfill my request.  You see Lulu, was not actually a Hutt, she was a Muun.  But she was adopted by a Hutt, one Grafasa the Hutt.  When Grafasa lost her child to a group of pirates who had tried and failed to capture it to ransom back to Grafasa, she went apoplectic in rage.  When a Hutt was raising a child was one of the few time that you did not want to mess with a Hutt, they would not back down.  So she murdered them, their families, and their neighbors.  But when she was raiding the final base of what was at the time a fairly large pirate gang, she found Lulu in a cage.  She was supposed to be ransomed as well, but they were pretty inept for a pirate gang and killed of her parents.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    So the pirates figured that they would raise her and use her as a tool to take over the business when she was older, maybe use her in other ways too.  But that didn''t end so well for them.  Instead Grafasa had asked the child how she wanted them killed.  Lulu stated she did not, no they wished she did.  No, they were still alive, submerged in bacta, and continuously tortured.  At first Grafasa was appalled at how soft the child was, but when she heard how she actually wanted to deal with them she fell in love with this child''s deep black Hutt heart.  So Grafasa adopted the child.


    While it was not surprising for Hutts to raise children of other species as if they were their own, it was rare for them to truly adopt.  Other races were just not compatible, Hutts were some of the smartest species in the universe, with those that were could be counted on Hutt four fingered hands.  But even if they were as intelligent they also rarely lasted near as long.  At best most races could be considered long lived pets, if that.  With Hutts being able to live 2-3 millenniums, though rarely that long, even Nute''s 300 potential years, though unlikely with all his stress, was literally nothing.  Of course, Hutts rarely lived that long.  Their long life of overindulgence saw to that.  A Hutt wasn''t respected in their society unless they were fat and unhealthy with indulgence and excess.


    But Muun were different.  They could live for 700 years, which coincided with the average modern lifespan of a Hutt.  Granted, that was still them dying of a heart attack middle aged, but still.  So Grafasa adopted her and made her a Hutt.  None of the other Hutts were going to mess with a grieving Hutt mother so they didn''t make a big stink about it, and those that did, well, they aren''t alive to tell their side.  And in Hutt society a dead argument is none at all.  It helps that none of the major players were too surprised, it isn''t the first time that a grieving Hutt mother had done the same thing, but it was a rarety throughout history.  Mostly for how rare it was for a Hutt to lose a child.


    The fact that it was many of those same detractors that had been the ones to allow such an event to happen in the first place helped things along probably.  As one of the rules of Hutt society was not to get in the way of Hutt mothers, just as it was that Hutt mothers should step back from their duties.  Not much mind you, but enough that they didn''t make waves and allow their child to be a tempting target.  Grafasa <i>had</i> obeyed the rules at the time, not that you would find them written, the other Hutts had not.  They are dead, she is not, history proves who is right.


    So I was meeting Lulu hoping to get to Grafasa.  If Lulu was able to broker such a deal she would rise in her mother''s circle, something she hadn''t had the opportunity to do in at least 100 years.  Of course, she might become an outcast as well, having brokered a deal that was beyond her without thinking of the ramifications.  But I doubted that it would come to that.  I would be making many deals with many Hutts in my time here.  And if Grafasa couldn''t see the writing on the wall she would be taken over by her competitors.  If lulu was still in the picture at that time would be inconsequential, I just needed those blasters, not to worry about one ancient Muun girl.  Seriously, at 300 she was already older than I would ever be.


    I walked into the ongoing rave party.  As a Niemidian I could see the graffiti stuck to the walls that would otherwise make the place look drab and unassuming.  Instead it was directions on where to get the best spice, which was constantly covered over.  Or where to get the best prostitutes, or slave girls, and guys...  Even a species directory.  Rather than some kind of art piece it was more like yellow pages for thugs.  This almost made me physically laugh.  i quickly spotted Lulu and her entourage.  She was on a surplus hoverdeck that looked like it came off the senate floor.


    I spotted the way up in a little floating platform, and walked over.  It was easy to bully the slave boy/thug out of the way with my droids.  I manhandled him but didn''t actually hurt him or leave bruises.  I knew that Lulu would take it as even more of an insult, but I needed to make a power play here.  Lulu was really not someone that could deal with me, and I needed to make that a statement, here on Nar Shaddaa more than anywhere.  I could only bring along two droids so I brought one B2 and one droidika. The other two made sure that no one else could get onto the hover disks and interrupt us.


    "Her eminence Lulu the Hutt demands you state who you are to barge in here and interrupt her eminence."  Stated a pretty little twilek slave boy at her side.  Couldn''t be a day older than 18 and already thought himself hot shit for being the bosses favorite of the moment.  I was more interested in the slave girl that was at Lulu''s side, I could tell the difference between the toy and the actual tool.  And the twilek, who looked to be the boy''s sister or mother, was definitely a fighter, with her toned figure, and what looked like concealed blades.


    Now, most would think that blades beat blasters, and most would be dead, in the tight confines a blade beats a blaster almost every time.  There was only about 3 meters between us, and I had no doubt that Lulu had a shield up around her half.  That meant with a good step and thrust the female twilek could have a blade in me.  Well, if my droidika didn''t can her first.  but my droidika already had it''s blaster out, they were it''s arms.  My B2 on the other hand would have to first pop it''s blaster out, then make sure it was aimed properly, then fire.  This took time, time that I would take to step behind my droidika, but time nonetheless.


    It was only the truly accomplished fighters that used melee weapons in a fight.  Even a kid could shoot a blaster, but while a vibroblade could cut even durasteal like butter, it still took skill to fight anything but an unprepared opponent, skill I was sure this twilek had.


    Meanwhile some thug was trying to harass my droids, talking about how he had an appointment with Lulu the Hutt.  He didn''t get the hint until a B2 tossed him and some people unfortunate enough to be behind him into a pillar and pointed a blaster at him.


    Staring at Lulu I had my B2 that I had programed to be a protical droid translate my Niemidian.  "The viceroy states that you have something that he wants.  he will have it, but you can not provide it for him."  The boy huffed, not waiting for his master to speak. "There is nothing on Nar Shaddaa that Lulu the Hutt cannot acquire.  It is only if you could afford the price."  The Muun''s face twitched and the boy''s sister looked at him like an idiot.  Clearly, he was not well educated enough if he didn''t realize that there was nothing on Nar Shaddaa that a viceroy could not buy, the question was just the quantity.


    "The viceroy requires heavy and ultraheavy turbolasers..."  the boy scoffed again, "Lulu the Hutt can easily accommodate your..."  "2,000 of them, each,"  the boy did not look so well, and now Lulu looked at the boy, it was not a nice look.  The boys mother also looked at him unapprovingly, mother than, sister would be more annoyed.  "And that is just to start."  Finished the droid.  Yes, while medium turbolasers were the largest still in production in the galaxy at large, and even those were heavily restricted, you could get whatever you needed in Nar Shaddaa.  It was clear the Hutts had some form of production, though the make of the turbolasers varied greatly.  These turbolasers I had no doubt would very greatly from different manufacturers, which would cause refit times to also very even more.


    But I needed those turbolasers.  The republic did not have them, at all.  Well, at all except those that blatantly did not follow the rules, such as kuat.  Correllia also had several, but they were much closer to one offs for their ''historic cultural fleet'' that ''they have had since before the ruusan reformations''.  It was all nerf pooduu but they had enough pull in the senate to get away with it, and it meant that they would never face reprisal while the ruusan reformations was in effect.  Meanwhile Nute wasn''t sure that the replublic judiciary force had a medium turbolaser between them.  Instead they would have to beg one of the core worlds to deploy one of their ''precious'' ships if there was ever a pirate that could outgun them, hint, there were a lot.


    This is why it was so easy for the Trade Federation to get away with arming their ships, mostly with droid fighters and ''security'' droids.  because they were facing pirate FRIGATES that were also usually ''cultural artifacts'' from before ruusan.  Mostly because they weren''t built anymore in the greater Republic, but also because there were just SO MANY DREADNAUGHTS</a>** that were produced.  Between them and the hammerhead</a>, it was amazing that there were any other types of ships out there.  It was like if toyota built a capital ship, the camry of the capital ships.


    So it was no wonder that some would be pirate king would find a random dreadnaught and refit it, if they were lucky.  Or just use the barely functioning thing as is if they were not.  Still, the one thing a lucrehulk is not known for is it''s speed, which means that it will need to simple turtle a capitol''s fire until it can jump to hyperspace, assuming that the pirates don''t simply follow them.  This is where the munificents</a> and vulture fighters come in.  They were used as escorts to take down any remnant pirates that happened across a lucky find and thought they could simply bully the Trade Federation.  A worryingly increasing scenario.


    This was why the senate, loath to actually spend money on the rim, allowed the Trade Federation to arm their ships and take care of the problem by it''s own initiative.  Unfortunately, this did not solve the problem, and one of it''s biggest reasons was standing in front of him.  Lulu, and those like her in Hutt space sold enough weaponry to take down the trade federation, and possibly the core if they focused it all.  Luckily for them the Hutts would not, nor would they allow anyone to do so.  Any attempt by said pirates, would be quickly destroyed, but the Hutts themselves no less.


    And this was because they could not afford an awake republic, heavens forbid they might actually realize that Hutt controlled space has expanded more in the last 1000 years than it has in the past 5000 before that.  More and more, worlds ''willingly'' declared themselves a part of the Hutt empire over centuries, because the Hutts had the time, we didn''t.


    So I needed these technically illegal blasters.  There were also other parts that I needed from Hutt space too, like the wrist canon parts for the B2s as well as several other parts that were illegal to produce, but not really to own, in the Republic.  And the senate would not take them away from me once I had them... Well, after I lost the lawsuit, but I had <i>plans</i> for that...


    **  Wookie page states that they were introduced in 119 bby, but they were in use by Raven and such, which was like 4k years ago.  Not to mention the Hammerhead which was also in use at the time.  This is likely this particular refit.

 11 Slugs are worms with eyes...

    After bullying Lulu a bit, which was certainly <i>not</i> going to bite me later, I had nothing left.  At first she had wanted to try to force her way into being the middleman.  But that soon broke down, this caused blasters to be drawn.  But the whine of the B2s and the shields of the driodika dissuaded them.  Even with most of the bounty hunters here combined, they knew that they couldn''t take down the droids.  At least, not take them down and walk away without casualties.  It was a common weakness in Hutt armies, fodder armies with self preservation instinct.  It was also why most of their dedicated units lacked it.


    After weighing the cost benefit analysis, Lulu also quickly agreed, mostly because she would end up with a pyrrhic victory in the first place, enter a place of weakness, and quickly be taken out by an enterprising Hutt that wanted her place.  While Lulu was competent and capable, her mother''s interest soon waned after the first 2 centuries.  Oh she pretended like she still had her mother''s favor, and her mother went along with it... But she would not be where she is if she still had it though, dealing with small transactions one ship at a time.


    But I only had to murder another twenty sophonts on the way home.  Some of them weren''t even ''sapient'' races!  But that was all I had to do this evening.  Well, correction, that was all Nute had to do this evening.  There was a smuggler''s hatch in my docking port, and I was going to use it!  Sidious had given me a shopping list and I would literally be damned if I didn''t complete it.  The only problem is, there will be in investigation shortly, and I would be damned if I did complete it.  At least most of it.  I planned on doing some of the things as Nute, mostly things that would bite me, but I could get away with just a little itching.  Not something that would be lethally dangerous.


    <hr>


    After getting back to the ship, I dressed myself not in the fine splendor of a Niemidian, but the rustic charm of a Duros merc.  It was fine, all but a Duros wouldn''t be able to tell that my darker skin marked me as a Niemidian, and even a Duros would never expect a Niemidian to deign to be undignified enough to look like a merc.  Which was perfect for a disguise.  Heck, they might even suspect I was working for someone else, after all, while Duros were some of the more intelligent races, they weren''t know for being crafty, creative, or a mastermind.  They had too much of a warrior culture for that.  It explained why there were so many that were Mandalorians.


    Fortunately it wasn''t very hard to blend in.  In fact the armor he was wearing, complete with a breathing mask, goggles, and a hood, meant that nobody could see him or inspect him too close.  Honestly, he looked like he was wearing a hoody and jeans.  If that Hoody had armor plate like an ancient paladin and those jeans were vac rated.  At least the boots looked spacey, but he wasn''t sure if it was 1974 I''m cool like a space man or spacer work tuff.  They were common sturdy work boots for the average spacer, but they had a lot of bright coloring on them, the pants and ''hoody'' too for that matter.  However the materials used were tough enough to take indirect small caliber blaster fire and yet the inside felt comfortable like silk, with it''s anti-chaffing layer.


    Either way, Nute couldn''t decide.  The only thing he knew was that old Nute would have hated it, and instead dressed as one of the home guard, instantly ratting him out.  So fair, it would probably hold to inspection.  I also Equipped a E-313 blaster rifle</a> as well as a DC-15s</a>.  The E-313 was mounted on a mag plate attached to my back, and was old, used, and well cared for.  This showed I had been in the game for a long time.  Meanwhile the DC-15s was obviously new.  These blasters had only hit the markets recently and they were <i>military grade</i> weapons.  This was likely to allow the Kimonians to have access to equip them while maintaining plausible deniability of where they came from.


    Sidious could get away with many things, but he still wasn''t able to play things out in the open.  Not till he became chancellor at least.  This meant that he had to leek several things and let the scavengers pick up the breadcrumbs, not that he cared.  If this was anything like he ran the Empire, and likely was, then he would let the rats have the cheese and serve it and the rats to his guests.  Still, it meant that only the best would have the DC-15s for now.  And that meant not to mess with me.  Meanwhile I had blast knuckles</a> and a dart launcher tucked away in my gloves.  They would do me well in this concrete jungle.


    I moved along the tunnel, noting several access hatches that I could only assume lead to other crime boss lairs or to smugglers entrances in the docking ports.  It might not seem like it, but in Nar Shaddaa those that had a space ship were already in the upper echelons of power.  I could simply place a help wanted add out, and I would have dozens if not hundreds of desperate looking for off this rock.  I didn''t need them, not now at least, but it was a good backup plan.  If I ever needed a disposable ''pirate'' gang, I could higher by the thousands and the Hutts wouldn''t give a damn.  It''s ironic to be lower and <i>less</i> valuable than a slave, but to the Hutts, that''s what the ''free'' people not in their ''tender loving'' care were.


    I came across a crossway and I could hear footsteps.  Far off, but the fact meant that I was getting closer to inhabited areas.  I didn''t want to take an access hatch, or at least not yet.  You never knew what you would come across on the other side.  I had no doubts that many scavs simple waited topside with an electro prod waiting for an unfortunate to come along.  And that''s if there wasn''t <i>worse</i> waiting for me.  No, I needed to find where this passage met the underground.  There I could make my way topside and I''d only have to worry about those I could see.


    I smelled it before I saw it.  Ironically the respirator that I was wearing was actually an expensive, valuable kind.  The kind that only those that knew what they were looking at would know how valuable it was.  This one filtered toxins out, but was able to allow me to smell the surroundings still.  It even allowed me to track by smell.  I had picked it carelessly and it was biting me now.  Not only did the underground smell like hot trash, it was mixed in with scents and spices.  Probably the only way to disguise what kind of meat you were eating.


    Indeed, The passage opened up into a market, with stalls as far as the eye could see, and going down at least a dozen levels.  I could see many causeways going across and at the end of the industrial chasm was an L shape turn on one side and a T at the other.  Over a thousand meters at least from end to end and 12 stories down.  I took a picture of the two shops next to me with my goggles, I knew there was no way I could find my way back otherwise.  I wondered if there was a [Find My Ship] app on the holonet, but here on Nar Shaddaa it would all be ransomware or spyware anyway.


    I had, stupidly not gotten one of those computational brick in me wristguard.  But my goggles should do fine as long as I took pictures at every intersection.  Some tuffs and gangers may not like it, but I was more than equipped to reeducate them.  Ironically I found less trouble down here.  Everywhere I went I would see tuffs and gangers, no enforcers.  But there were no scavs here.


    Moving through the causeway, I would lock eyes with a tuff or a ganger.  But unlike on the ''surface'', they would simply nod along, I would nod back, and then move on my way.  I had several places to be, but I did not rush.  I walked at a casual but decisive pace.  Interestingly this seemed to give me a gravatas in this area.  It was interesting how business work ethic, drilled into me since I was a grub, seemed to mirror here.  Don''t swing your arms, that''s a waste of energy, meant, don''t swing your arms, that attracts attention.  The individual, I could tell was trying to act casually, was followed into a back alley as they made there turn.  A handful of blaster fire later the two tuffs that followed them walked out, slightly happier.  The individual did not.


    Another thing I noticed, there were a lot more ''aliens'' here.  Oh sure, the majority was twilek.  But that might as well be one in ten, not the overwhelming majority there was in the core.  In fact, I might be hard pressed to find one in one hundred humans.


    There were even some interesting ones.  I say what I could only describe as a sentient fungus, not to be confused with the sentient mushroom I saw earlier, which seemed to have a small conclave.  The fungus was interesting in that it seemed to be almost like a bag of snacks trying to be human-<i>esk</i>.  It had to move several of its individual fungus vines rubbing against each other and flexing as it waved one of its two and a half arms around, gesticulating in conversation.  It sat at an ''outdoor'' bar on it''s five legs with a stool between them.


    The mushroom people though, were apparently living out the side of what was a store.  Ironically, they sold what looked like a fungal soup.  I saw them smear what I could only assume was their spore on a backpack mounted backpack.  This spore would then become one of the wall hangers that were screaming and munching on anything.  I even saw one of it''s ''parents'' lose a hand to the thing.  Though they didn''t seem to mind at all.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    I saw what could only be described as ''space elves''.  I saw a devil like man, and a devil like woman, who were apparently selling themselves inf front of a whore house.  I saw what looked like a tree and a dog had a kid and came out looking like a dog worm, with thumbs.  But most creatures seemed to by human shaped, or at least human-esk.


    Of course there was that one bat winged woman.  She didn''t seem to be intelligent, with a maw of needle-like teeth.  She was all white, including her wings.  She had a black main of tentacles for hair, with one ropey one that traveled down her spine and ended in a tail that had a vicious stinger at the end, no bulb but it leaked venom as it twitched behind her.  She was stuck on a perch with a leash and completely nude.  Her ''owner'' seemed not to mind her, though she did not ware a slave color, just a leash.  And she hissed at passers by that seemed to gain an interest in her.  Again, not that her owner minded.


    Nar Shaddaa, in spite itself, was one of the few places I had been, where non humans seemed to outnumber the human population.  There were still plenty of humans of course.  But the Hutts preferred rare slaves.  And while twileks and togruta were fairly common galactically, it was simply for their *cough* qualities.  Humans were far too common for the Hutts.  Of course, they also became rarer outside the core, with most of the human worlds there, but most of the core was also human to start with.


    What was more interesting were the ''non'' slaves.  These were either the children of former slaves that weren''t reported and thus not chipped.  Or formerly slaved to a Hutt, but not anymore.  Of course, both was an option too.  This left them as the dregs, as Hutts would grant their protection.  This left them as fair game to prey on by everyone else.  This even kind of sort of applied to off-worlders.  However, that was only to a point.  While the gangs could pay the enforcers to look the other way if they moved a few people, they hardly ever moved more than in groups of five or six.


    I could even see a group doing so, but this was to <i>attract</i> an enforcers attention then to actually dissuade it.  Nobody was going to bring down the wrath of the Hutts.  And while the Hutts would gladly allow all of the dregs to get murdered, that was bad for business overall.  And if there was anything the Hutts revered, it was business.


    I saw the group pass by on a lower level.  They were soon harassed by another group but the Hutt enforcer stepped in quickly.  Probably too quick.  After a commotion both groups quickly paid the Hutt enforcer and left.  Only when the other group left did the Hutt enforcer give them their cut for ''allowing'' him to step in.  They quickly started and argument about being short changed, but stopped when the enforcer reached for his axe.  Gamorreans**** may be stupid, but they were not weak, AND he was a Hutt enforcer.  So even though he was outnumbered they took it and left.


    I shook my head.  The whole interaction was silly, if that enforcer wanted to go anywhere he should have paid extra for the good job.  It was why the Hutts were so generous.  Everyone thought it was to curry ''favors'', and it was to curry favor, but it was also to leave a good impression on the individual.  Usually after the Hutt launched an assassination attempt or trap.


    No, you rewarded competence, and punished incompetence.  You favored your competent employees and the incompetent ones would earn your ire.  At least that was how things should run.  Old Nute did not, but old Nute was a stooge raised to stupendous levels.  He kept around sycophants and boot likers, while he retained just enough competent to maintain his standing.  While that could function, as his sycophants would keep the competents in line, eh needed to have slightly above even numbers.  Instead, he had only an handful of competent people to keep his operations running at the bare minimum.  The rest were too incompetent and were losing him business.  That reminded him, he needed to make a series of layoffs.  And his coming troubles would be the perfect excuse.


    I came to an unassuming exit, covered in graffiti.  Which was the thing about Nar Shaddaa, I could see both the Hutt graffiti and the normal range.  I quickly checked the graffiti and found the right bar on the surface.  It wasn''t hard with the mandalorian that was tossed out a window.  They quickly turned on their backpack and flew back in, blasters blazing.


    I... was not so sure I wanted to go in there anymore.  When I was bout to turn around however, I got a call on my communicator.  Ducking into an alley and stepping over the sleeping mandalorian.  I went a bit further before peeling off again.  I did not need the mandos looking through the automatic recordings and realizing I had picked up a call in their vicinity.  Ducking behind another back alley, I was getting further from the main street.  This was dangerous territory as it all belonged to the gangs, to keep those individuals that could actually afford an apartment in line.


    The communicator stopped beeping for a moment, only to start beeping again, more insistently this time.  I knew who it was, my ship only allowed to patch through one person, Sidious.  Everyone else could wait.  luckily, it was not a holotransmitter.  He was not going to be happy to be made to wait, but I was not in a place that I could afford to demure to his ego.  Finally I was in a dead end, tucked away between two mega buildings.


    "Yes"  I replayed as soon as the comms connected.  "What took you so long?" asked Sidous angrily.  As if I was in my own home, safe, and not on Nar Shaddaa making a clandestine phone call.  "I had to reach a safe place to receive you, or did you want this conversation to be heard by everyone, including the Hutts."  Which I knew was the last thing I wanted.  The Hutts were famous for one thing if not anything else, double dealing.  They dealt information as if it were spice, deadly, addicting, and would ruin your life.


    "No, you are right, that would not be preferable." said Sidious.  I knew what he meant was, ''You were wrong to do this, but I will delay your punishment until the next time you screw up.''  But it did not matter.  One was a slow and painful death, the other was something incredibly painful, but survivable.  "What was it that demanded my immediate attention?"  I questioned in a dull whisper.  I had taken my respirator off so as not to change my voice.  It was installed with a vocalizer to disguise my voice, but I didn''t want Sidious to know I was making his deals clandestine.  He would have wanted me to be upfront, better to make them all the more damning, and curry more favor when he gets me out of them.


    "I wanted to know if you had met with the death watch yet?  It is imperative that you meet with them as soon as possible."  He stated.  And I was <i>sure</i> it was, but not beneficial to myself.  He just wanted the Trade Federation to do more of his dirty work for him.  "I was just about to meet them, if I didn''t receive an important call beforehand."  I stated.  Even though Niemidians were not known for their sarcasm, I could feel that Sidious both understood and did not appreciate it, I couldn''t for the life of me understand why...


    "Just make sure not to screw this up, it is imperative to the future of my plans, as it is your own."  Stated Sidious.  I could feel him trying to worm something into my head, and for a moment I let him succeed.  It felt like this meeting held my life and future in it.  And forced it back out the moment the call disconnected.  It was a good thing I had removed the respirator, as I puked up something black and vile in the alley.  Taking a moment to collect myself I started my walk back.  Only to find a no longer sleeping mandolorian in my way.


    "You, *hurp* you think you can ignore me? Huh?  I''m a mada, manda, lorian, *hurp*, and I''m going to kick your ass to show you..." he stated drunkenly.  Considering how hard it was for him to stand, I highly doubted it.  But he was still an armed mando.  He launched a shock wire that completely missed, likely to drunk to follow the targeting computer in his helm.  Lucky for me too, as I wouldn''t have been able to dodge.  We both stared at were he missed to, and a moment later it plugged into a dumpster, which pulled him forward with a jerk when the wire locked on and retracted.


    He quickly cut the wire, the whole thing going to a waste as my mind calculated the loss of profits.  Then he pointed his other gauntlet at me and I dodged out of the way.  Quickly he launched a series of darts, ones that landed into a couple of unfortunates, some thugs that had poked their heads out to see what was going on.  Unfortunately for them, they landed, they writhed on the ground screaming in agony for only a moment before going still.  My goggles beeping that their life signs had ceased.  The mandolorian had brought up his other gauntlet already aiming it at me, but I was faster, my blaster knuckles hit him in the neck, set to stun, as I hadn''t had the time or thought to change it.


    The flame thrower went off wildly as the mando flopped, I blocked his gauntlet as it came up and the flamer went off.  Probably out of juice and needed to recharge.  I left the mando to his own devices and moved on to the cantina.  Only to have every blaster pointed in my direction.


    "And what do we owe the pleasure of someone that comes into my house, and beats up my people? Hmm?"  Stated Tor Vizzla, leader of the death watch.  He was watching a holo of me beating up his subordinate, but he did not seem perturbed.  I noticed a young female mandalorian by his side, clearly too young to be here, probably Bo-katan Kryze then.  She looked to be in her early teens, trying desperately to fit in with the much older rougher crowd.


    "The same as everyone in our business, well business."  I stated as I threw the holo recorder onto a nearby table.  From it Sidious voice started to play out.  "Hello, glorious mandalorians..."


    *** So, GL himself stated "I wanted to create a species that is universally the bad guys, no argument." when he made the Hutts.  But, since I''m dealing with them, I wanted to have a much deeper culture than ''Machiavellianly evil''.  So I''m styling the Hutt culture after ancient egypt.  And it fits lore wise.  Which also means that the Hutts do not see themselves as evil, just possibly out of touch with their literal ''lessers''.


    **** learned my lessen and actually looked this one up first...

 Inter(no-lewd) 1

    Waking up to seeing my ''mother'' hovering over me was not how I expected my day to go.  I say ''mother'' with air quotes even in my own head, because she was NOT my mother.  I say that because she was an alien.  I soon learned I was as well, but her alien beauty had entranced me for a moment.  Probably a good thing too, as otherwise I would have freaked out <i>before </i>I realized I was reincarnated.


    Of course, within days I was taken in by a jedi master, one of the ''seekers'' that believed it was their duty to pick up the kids that got left behind by the otherwise ''perfect'' jedi system.  Having Learned I was in star wars, hard to miss the ubiquitous yt-1300</a>, I at first wasn''t sure I wanted to leave with the famous child snatchers.


    That changed very rapidly as the jedi master conversed with my ''parents''.  I mean, learning the force was cool and all, but jedi... Not that the Sith were any better, I knew better than to trust a drug addict.  But no, first of all, my parents had apparently purchased me from the government ''not'' slavers.  Next they were very interested in ''giving'' me to the jedi master as a favor, a favor they expected to be repaid as a blank check, and were very adamant about.  Lastly, while my government made all orphans ''not'' slaves and sold them as cheap ''not'' labor to families that could afford them while still affording their education, I was now owned outright by my jedi master.


    This perturbed him greatly, and he eventually ended up just outright mindwiping my ''not'' foster parents.  Probably a good thing I wasn''t very attached to them, for good reason too.  Too much attachments, and the jedi wouldn''t let me join their cool magic club.


    <hr>


    I was eating with my cohort, those younglings that were my age and learning level, when it happened.  You see, my race*** was special and interesting.  We were classified as near human, because we had apparently evolved form humans at some point after a toxin was introduced to our atmosphere.  Nobody knows how exactly it got there, records are spotty, but it apparently got/gets everywhere.  Easily tracked into anywhere and everywhere.  So, my race had to adapt, and with everything in this crazy magic galaxy that meant things got weird.  We had ''not'' scales from our temples to our cheeks, black from the color of the toxin.  Though technically it was a chitin covered fingernail like thing.


    But I also had stubby cute little horns that curled up into my hair on my forehead.  I also had small ones that hid amongst my hair at the moment, colored brown but it was bone.  These horns would later grow into a distinctive regal but feminine crown, as opposed to the domineering masculine ones found on the men.  My hair was black like my scales, as well was my sclera, but my pupils held a shimmering blue/green to them.  My ex family joked that I held tiny planets in the void of my eyes.


    The thing is, most of this stuff had the toxic impurities throughout them, as a way for my body to offload the toxins.  These would slowly fade to white, and then clear without the toxins.  The problem was that my race had gotten so used to and developed around these toxins is that we would soon die.  it was to the point that special care had to be taken when administering medical treatment, as many medications and treatments, including bacta, would remove the toxins from our bodies.  It was to the point that we had to have a special strain of kolto, cheaper than bacta, to be developed.  It was kinda like ultra strength super yeast back on earth.


    Here''s the problem, the way we get that toxin into our system when not in system? through food.  And for some odd reason, the chefs took it as some kind of strange spice and thought it to be a challenge to create a recipe for this unique food.  admittedly, the closest I could name the flavor of the toxin would be ''sweet'', even though it''s its own flavor, so when they put it in a muffin it kind of fits.  The muffin itself was bland, like the rest of the meal, but it was a sweet treat, something to get the kids to eat properly.  Even many masters didn''t get the muffins or cookies that the younglings did, except yoda, because they were too proud to ask, and only younglings got them as standard.


    Now, one young enterprising youngling decided that they would take said muffin stating "it''s not fair that you get to eat our meals but we don''t get to eat yours, a jedi should share."  Granted my whole meal was contaminated, and couldn''t be eaten by anyone else, but that was <i>extra</i> levels for the muffin.  The rest could be purged with a quick visit to medical.  So for his own safety I smacked his hand, hard, and he dropped the muffin.  But he also started balling like the child that he was.


    Of course, this attracted the caretakers, who usually wouldn''t respond to this kind of thing, but they were right there and saw the whole thing.  This meant they couldn''t ignore the ''bullying'' like usual.  "How can you treat you fellow cohort like this?  You will be punished for this!"  stated one.  More were yelling and scrambling but the jedi knight that was shepherding us moved in quickly.  "You cannot treat your fellow younglings like that, especially for something as meager as possessions like a sweet treat.  you will never become a jedi for being so greedy!  At least not while I have a say in it!"  She said.


    It took me a moment to get myself under control, not in anger, but in exasperation.  I wanted to roll my eyes, and stare at these idiots so hard, but I could already see the caretaker trying to give the idiot the muffin again already.  I smacked her hand with a force enhanced slap, and not the ''kiddy'' slap I gave to the kid.  She recoiled in horror and shock.  I could see it on her face, how dare I do this to her?  How dare I stand up to her?  She was in control, she had the power over me, I was some kind of monster for defying her!... I had some teachers like that in school, luckily I was usually almost never their targets, and when I was, it was aimed at the entire class.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I broke a piece off and handed it to the jedi knight, the only one that might actually survive this idiocy.  "Try it."  I stated.  She looked at me questioningly.  I could see the kid trying to reach for a piece himself but my raised hand might as well have smacked him for how quick he took it back, going teary eyed again.  I turned back to the jedi knight "Try it." I stated again.  I saw one of the caretakers, some ''failed'' jedi, some not try for a piece, but I took it back.


    The jedi, ready to end my rebellion and also prove her point, took the piece and ate it.  Then she almost immediately regretted it.  Having to start meditating on the spot to stop the poison, and spitting up some bile and saliva with it.  The jedi stated "The muffin is poisoned, maybe the whole meal, stay back."


    To their shock and horror, I took the rest of the muffin and ate it.  "It''s not poison, well not to me anyway.  My race developed to this compound, and we now need it in our diets.  To me it''s a supplement.  I just saved that little runts life, and yours too while I''m at it."  I stated and pointed to the caretaker I had slapped earlier.  She glared at me, thankless people.


    "You poisoned a jedi knight!  The temple is going to kick you out to the streets!"  Said one of the caretakers.  I noted that she was the original one to have rushed over and admonish me.  "<i>I</i> did no such thing, you people however, are trying to get yourselves killed.  Miss Suwurla should be able to handle the toxin herself, and definitely last until medical can flush her system.  The rest of you would already be dead."  I stated.


    Well, the rest of things went as I predicted, Miss Suwurla did indeed flush most of it out of her system, even before medical could flush the rest with a simple hypo.  Of course, things did not end there.  My cohorts, and even several of the older cohorts, and most of my clan members, now ignored me.  Honestly, fare, kids, what wasn''t fare was that the jedi masters had gone up in arms against me.  I had literally acted fast to save these peoples lives and they acted like I was the evil monster.  The neutrals, which I learned was the faction behind Knight Suwurla wanted me gone.


    Knight Suwurla was, not quite ambivalent, but not quite hostile either.  She understood, intellectually what I did and why I did it, but I could feel that she couldn''t let herself except what I had done.  Then the neutrals had stated that it was unfair and unsafe that I eat like I did.  This put the other factions in an awkward position, but they decided to just simply let me eat alone from then on.  Honestly, I was doing that anyways, not allowed to sit with anyone else, and the tables I was already at were cleared, if I wasn''t shoved away from them.  Something the caretakers conspicuously didn''t react too...  This may have something to do with why I never saw that first caretaker again.


    However, the neutrals, human centric as they were, correction ''pure'' human centric, were not done.  They stated that it was unfair that I was allowed the ''privilege'' of eating alone.  when I heard this I laughed so hard in exasperated anger, I swear all the caretakers and children had thought I had suddenly fallen to the dark side and saw a rising of a new sith lord as they watched.  These ignorants were really getting on my nerves, and the politics at play here were stupid as they were disgusting.  I hated them almost as much as I hated my government for being the inbred slavers that they were!


    But, that had simply been the the rousing cry of the war horns.  Mine was not the only race or species with special dietary restrictions.  And the aliens quickly saw this for what it was.  Now, while humans did outnumber any other species at the temple by a large margin singularly, they did not at all collectively.  I was sure the dynamic had nothing to do with core world policy and how the core was dominated by humans.  Nor the fact that more humans below the cutoff were taken in, while aliens were at a much higher cutoff range for mediclorians.


    Anyway, the aliens were not going to let this lay.  Sure, the techniques they could understand, the artifacts many even agreed with, but biology?  Now that was crossing a line they would not stand for.  And that shut up the neutrals hard and fast.  Of course they were not done, but their hands were tied temporarily.


    So instead they ignored me, and forced masters to refuse to allow me into even basic, almost ''mandatory'' as far as those things go, classes.  That too was fine by me, I got what I needed from who I needed it from, almost at a one to one, if sporadic tutelage.  The rest I spent in the library, my new home/sanctuary.  Jacarsta Nu brooked non of this nonsense and was one of my major defenders besides.  And <i>nobody</i>, not even the neutrals wanted to mess with her on the warpath.  Even Yoda seemed to get out of her way the few times she worked up steam on some individuals that had wanted to make trouble for me.  And so there I stayed.<hr>


    I will admit, Anakin coming in when I was seven took off a lot of pressure.  If my inclusion to the temple happening two years ago ruffled feathers.  Or my mandatory dietary restrictions fell on their beliefs one year ago.  Anakin''s sudden inclusion to the temple gave them a rallying point to stand behind.  And I did kind of feel bad for making his life worse, but he turned into an asshole and it was predestined soo...


    But, if the neutrals were rallying against, then that just swayed everyone else''s vote for.  As the neutrals were still on everyone''s shit list after several of the stunts they pulled.  Now, that meant I, and conversely Anakin were being included in separate, but regular classes again.  But the rest of the council had simply shutdown the neutrals argument about his inclusion not being ''unanimous'' even if it had a 6 to 4 in favor.  This was because while the neutrals had 4 seats, they were on everyone else''s watch list for the shit they were pulling.  And they also stated a simple fact, the council vote was unnecessary and against procedure.  No other youngling needed it to be included, in fact most wouldn''t even be able to comprehend the test, let alone pass.


    This didn''t dissuade the neutrals, even if it di stymie them.  Me however, I knew I was screwed.  Because I know knew where and when I was in the timeline, and what it meant for myself...  I just hoped I was more chosen then I thought I was originally, because force, I was going to need it...

 12 Worms do the dirty work

    After finishing up Sidious''s dirty work.  Of which, I left the room so that I could have plausible deniability if I needed it later.  I returned, and already the alcohol was flowing again.  The mandos were fighting.  And they were bullying the poor barkeep, likely the only one left alive because their alcohol pouring skills were to valuable to waste...


    I grabbed the holorecording off the table and crushed it, nothing that somebody dedicated could figure out what was on it, which was why I was going to take the pieces to an incinerator later.  I didn''t need to take their answer, if it was yes, they would be contacted later.  I already knew it was yes.  And the Trade Federation was going to deliver weapons discreetly to help them.  Personally I found the Death Watch to be stupid.  The Super Commando Codex was much better in all ways, Death Watch was just a group of thugs.  This suited Palpatine''s agenda perfectly... Hmm, I could do something with this...


    Leaving the cantina, not a bar, not a pub... because reasons that were beyond me... I walked almost face first into a goon squad of enforcers.  Shit.  The enforcers obviously saw me leave the cantina and that was what they were after obviously.  I was so very screwed.  "Are you with the ones that attacked our turf, bounty hunter?"  Asked the slave girl in the middle.  It was clear she was in charge, and her ''brothers'' and ''sisters'' were leading them.  Protected in the middle of a massive group of 50, they stood no chance.  I wagered that there was another 2 or 3 groups at any of the other possible exits, but probably didn''t breach much over 100.


    "No, that''s the ones inside, mandalorians."  I said.  The enforcers looked like they were ready to pounce.  The honed axes might not look like much in a world of lasers and star ships but I knew, they were more useful than they appeared.  They were for boarding actions, designed to take down enemies with a brutal efficiency, you didn''t want to come across a Gamorean around a corner.  The slave girl in the middle nodded, and sent several enforcers around the sides of the entrance.  As soon as the mandalorians came out charging they would find Gamorean axes in their faces.  A good if useless plan.  I didn''t want to see it fall apart, but I was stuck here until their were done with me.


    "You can go."  She said, and I took the reprieve for what it was.  I made a hasty retreat, almost disapearing down a side alley when one of them stopped me, a younger twilek girl.


    "Wait!"  She called.  I stopped instantly, ready to pounce or run.  Her guards were too far away to protect her, but I had no illusions that she wouldn''t be able to tear into me with whatever hidden blades she had around her body.  Hutts were viciously cruel like that, they found it funny when you couldn''t see the obvious hidden knife in the skimpy slave girl outfit.  So when you were given reprieve to ''try it'' thinking you were hot stuff, and got stabbed, it was your fault, and it was ''hilarious''.  Wouldn''t be the first or the last time Nute saw it happen.


    Still, slave girl assassins took people by surprise, if he surprised her first, she would go down, literally zero armor.  "Why were you in a cantina filled with mandalorains?"  She asked.  "Business."  I replied.  "And what did you need from a bunch of mandalorains?"  She asked.  "<i>Business</i>."  I replied.


    I could see her getting frustrated at not getting answers.  Slave girls were the interrogators of the Hutts with literally <i>all</i> kinds of ways to get information out of their targets.  But I wasn''t a target, and I wasn''t about to let myself be.  Before she could press further the lead girl called out "Mora!".  It seemed her time was up.  Before she could leave I felt the urge to call out, "When the shooting starts, run, and take your girls with you."  I said, leaving alone that there were ''males'' mixed in with those ''slave girls'', she knew what I meant.  Of course, she scoffed at my advice, not thinking it would mean anything.  I just hoped I hurried along her decision to run later.  These pour SOBs didn''t know what Geonosian hive the were poking.


    I left before they shooting started, I guess the enforcers were organized enough to surround them but they lost the element of surprise by the time the encirclement was complete.  Still, I hurried away, and so did everyone else.  This was not really a good thing, as it pushed gangs and malcontents together.  fighting soon broke out, only to run and gun as the shooting got closer and further away.


    I was forced to draw my gun, I noticed an old man on his doorstep aiming at me, I shot to stun.  I missed, but he jumped back.  I didn''t miss the second time, and he fell down inside his home stunned.  Maybe a scav would get him, maybe he would get up while the scavs would get him, I didn''t want to be one of the ones going full lethal.  Not when I wanted to get into Hutt controlled territory.


    Obviously the mandos had been foolish to take on a protected business.  Usually, that is enough to prevent the gangers and scavs from being stupid, not always, spice was common.  But those that did and didn''t live in the Hutt territories thought they had enough firepower to prevent it, and simply wanted the Hutts to clean up the mess.  Clearly the mandos didn''t care, and they did an oops.  Now, they would have to run, and I would have to burn this disguise.  Luckily that was what it was meant for.  Though I didn''t want the attention, the makeup I had used wasn''t <i>that</i> good.


    But I wasn''t the one being hunted anyway, so it didn''t matter, if the Hutts could get their hands on me, they would torture and question me, but that was a later Nute problem.  Still, Nute Gunray would be above such questions anyway.  I saw an enforcer, some furry thing</a>, it was massive, and carried some kind of rotating blaster</a> like it was a regular rifle.  Only the furry beasts could do such a thing...


    Of course, the moment of your relief is the moment things get nasty.  The gangs had gotten a ''brilliant'' idea.  In hindsight it should have been obvious, they were taking tolls.  And as it was obviously just outside Hutt controlled territory, and the enforcer was bribed logically, the Hutts weren''t doing anything.  But it wasn''t going very well.  Nute would obviously pay some small bribe.  Other areas were clearly doing that, but this gang was new, so if you didn''t hand over everything you had on you, *blam* a blaster went off, a child screamed as their father was killed in front of them.


    I don''t know who shot first, well, from our side.  But I looked over from the smoking corpse of the shooting ganger to the several bounty hunters, gangers, and reasonably successful scavs.  There was an entire negotiation with our eyes in a matter of seconds, because that is all we had.  There must have been hundreds of gangers, to mobilize them all must cost this gang a small fortune in credits, a fortune they were looking to get back.  So they were pressing all of the scum that were looking to the reasonable safety of the Hutt demarcation line.  There it was safe, here it was not.


    The shooting started, the idiot that shot first was also... got shot first.  The scum that were my impromptu allies were all looking for somebody to hide behind.  The mother was able to grab her still reaching daughter as she grasped for her still smoking father''s corpse, able to escape in the confusion.  Luckily I was able to find a dumpster, the only gangers that could shoot at me were the far side, and they were more interested in the scum on their side then mine.  I shot them of course, mostly those that were looking to shoot at me... I will not say what my accuracy was, but it was enough.  I was halfway through pulling out my rifle on my back when I saw it, almost in still motion.


    Somebody on the promenade behind the Hutt enforcer was shot.  I don''t know who, or what it was, but... I knew I had to get out fast.  I turned around to look behind me for an exit, not the way I came, that was going to be stupid terrible.  everyone here, not a ''civilian'' and I use the term loosely only to include those already in the Hutt territory regardless of profession, or a Hutt enforcer, is dead.  In hind sight, it was stupid to start a firefight with the gangers here.  Also in hind sight, it happens... a lot...


    I clipped my rifle back to the mag clamp end pulled my pistol again.  Firing wildly behind me, maybe hitting and wounding some of the fellow scum, which was just a bonus for me at this point.  I had maybe a 30 meter dash to the nearest alley.  Something that would bring me out of sight.  There was one on the other side of the dumpster I was hiding behind, but it would have been suicide to go around.  It was still suicide to run for the one I was heading toward.  I felt blaster fire wise by my head.  The searing heat of a sun projected to kill me, and angrily missing each time.  Spitting off cursed heat as it passed and bussed in my ear.


    To say that I was the closest I had ever been to death would be an understatement.  I didn''t remember dying in my old world.  In this one I was bout to have that memory literally drilled into my skull.  I watched people screaming ahead and next to me die.  I shot behind me as long as it didn''t effect my gate, shooting wildly.  There was only gangers and scum back there anyway, so I probably wouldn''t hit anyone important.


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    I made it into the alley just in time, as a wave of blaster fire hit the front of it.  I could hear the telltale whine of the Hutt skiffs running up behind.  I dodged around allies, even jumping a 3 meter dead end that I don''t remember HOW I managed.  Nute wasn''t exactly in good shape, and it wasn''t like I was a star athlete with enough skill to make up for it.  I did this kind of wall run thing jumping up and off the wall before latching on.  The blaster fire sending my alien endocrine system into overdrive to get me up and over before I realized I just jumped over a 3 METER WALL!


    Thinking of where to lay low for a while, I knew just the place...<hr>


    Diden was having a bad day.  first the Hutt enforcers roll through his neighborhood in force.  That was fine by itself, they weren''t after him this time.  But then the alien scum panic and start to run.  Now, Diden was no racist like those core world karkers.  But he just couldn''t stand the look of em''.  Then one of em'' looked his way.  He knew that look, it was the look of evil.  Cuz'' of course the alien scum was after his stuff.  Some Duros in a mask thinking he was the hot poodoo.


    A hell na''!  Diden was going to show em'' why they didn''t belong in his neighborhood.  So he reached for his blaster, made her on Nar Shaddaa!  That wasn''t really a good thing from what he had put it together with, but it was overcharged enough to count as a small fighter''s weapon.  Would be a right karnky slug to recharge though, but it would show that alien scum!


    Problem was that the scum wanted to steal his stuff!  So the evil thing fired first!  Probably could only afford one of those fancy core world stunners too!  That poodoo on it''s back probably didn''t even work!  But it was enough to put him lights out.  Diden came too with a couple of those short scabs.  They were no children, all colored the wrong way.  Sub-human filth!  Diden elbowed the one and was about to shoot the other when the evil thing was back!  It raised it''s stunner and was going to shoot him again!  Hell na!  Diden brought around his blaster *zizit* and the world went black again...<hr>


    I came around to find a couple of urchins rummaging through the old man''s pockets.  He looked to be a down on his luck Correlian, you could always tell the scruffy bastards.  I couldn''t tell the difference between most of the human races and origins in this verse, I could barely tell them apart by color these days, still couldn''t tell you where they came from or who they were.  But a Correlian?  Easy, just look for the scruffiest bastard of the lot.


    "Get inside kids, and don''t make a noise."  I said still pointing my blaster at them.  It was set to stun, but it would still nock these kids right out.  They moved back without a word.  They looked at the old human, the hurt obvious.  They were used to it, they thought they could get a quick score and get out, now they were trapped with an alien.  Hopefully he would sell them and they would be able to eat once a day, working the gangs running spice had been great.  Only getting beatings once a day!  Sometimes 3 meals a day!  Sometimes none, depended on if the spice heads where tripping and remembered or not to give them their one meal.


    Now they were probably going to die to silence them.  "The Hutts are riled up, need to lay low for now.  Some idiot decided it would be smart to shoot a civ in the Hutt space."  I said.  "Don''t look at me like that, you can rummage his pockets as long as your quiet.  And don''t say anything if the enforcers come around.  Well, go on, he probably has some food in the cabinets over there."  I said, waving towards what looked to be the kitchen.  One leapt into action the other slowly went back towards the stunned human.  I grabbed the dangerous looking pistol, who it was most dangerous for, the person it was aimed at or the person aiming it was beyond me.  As well as the vibro boot knife.  But I didn''t care about how many creds he had.


    I moved over, it was made of some kind of beast hide and <i>looked</i> like it might have been a coach, if it wasn''t surrounded by trash, being the central support for the pile.  I didn''t want to sit in it, but it honestly looked like the cleanest spot, and I was dead tired.  I also knew I was going to be staying here a while.


    "You going to slave us mister."  Asked one of them, the pink one with bright blue hair.  "No, I have no need of slaves."  I stated.  "Why?  We could be real good slaves mister."  Stated the blue one with red eyes and black hair.  "Yeah, we can even do adult stuff!"  Said the pink one.


    "Do you even know what adult stuff is?"  I asked, "No, don''t answer that, this is Nar Shaddaa."  I retracted.  I did not want to know what they did to kids here, nor what kids did to survive, these little urchins were probably already worse scum then the worst of most worlds.  And they were still probably considered innocent ''kids'' around here.


    For some reason looking at my thoughtful face made the pink one laugh.  "your too naive mister, you don''t belong here."  She said.  "You mean about your sister here picking through my pockets while you try to attract my attention?"  I said.  While the pink one laughed the blue one had the good sense to look embarrassed.  Of course, aside from a handful of credits there wasn''t anything in there.  Something that seemed to bring her no end to consternation as she was rifling through my pockets.


    Why would I have anything in there, this was just a disguise and not my real outfit.  I just needed this to last me there and back.  Though it did blow all my plans for arrangements.  I <i>was</i> going to meet with a couple of Hutts in open court, to arrange for some *cough* random pirates and accidents to hit several areas.  I needed more power, in a lot of areas, if I was going to get out from under Sidious any time soon.  Specifically before Dooku gained power.


    The two urchins cuddled up to me and got comfortable.  I was only slightly perturbed about how easily they decided to cuddle up to me.  But I won''t say I minded it much.  They were cute, and cuddled into me like a cat, or a small animal.  I had a cat in my apartment, I remember that now that they cuddled into me like my Larry.  I don''t remember anything about him, or about my apartment, or even all that much about my past, now that I tried to focus, something was pushing it away.


    I wanted to be angry about that, but I could feel this thing pushing against me was also keeping me from missing everything I lost.  So it was kind of a wash, since if I did, I would be inconsolable.  I could feel that I should, being close enough to family/friends/life to have wanted to miss it.  But it was hard to miss what you couldn''t remember.  And hard to be angry when you couldn''t feel angry about it.  I still didn''t like it, obviously, I didn''t want anything controlling me, especially in my own mind.  But it was useful, and beneficial, so I let it go for now.


    I could feel the breath of the two kids on my neck as they slept.  They had almost fallen right asleep.  It seemed strange, but at the same time I understood.  These two urchins probably never stopped running.  The only time they were able to relax was when they were under the thumb of somebody powerful.  That meant you either picked the furthest corner and stayed out of sight, or cuddled up to the biggest monster.  And it just so happened that I was the biggest monster.


    I almost wanted to go to sleep myself, if it wasn''t for the bantha in the room.  Or realistically, the old Corellian dozing in the center of it.  Apparently, even he was getting his sleep...<hr>


    It was probably a good thing I stayed up too.  Not even an hour after the kids dozed off there was a pounding at the door.  This seemed to be enough to jerk the jerk awake, at least slightly.  He stirred but did not wake up.  Good too, as that would mean I would have to stun him again, then I would have to explain it.


    It was a weequay at the door.  Ugly face that looked like a skin colored turd.  "You know what happened in Szidan''s district today?"  Said the enforcer.  in hindsight it was obvious what he was, but I hadn''t realized in my daze, didn''t change anything though.  "No Sir, just sleeping off some cold ones."  I said.


    By this time an enforcer in the back had already scanned me, and he came up negative.  I hadn''t noticed him as he was on the other side of the door but when the scan from the terminal beeped an negative they turned away.  Which was exactly when the old man woke up...


    You know, at this point I should have tied him up and put him in the basement... Or just killed him and got it over with.  Instead, I slipped out my blaster and stunned him again.  Of course, between our draws, his mouth was faster, so it wasn''t before he got off an "Damn aliens, ugly ass poop faced weequay."  In hindsight, I probably saved his life.


    At first I could see the anger, and then the processing happening behind his face.  I took out some of the bribe money I had prepared.  The kids gasped, annoyed that I had somehow kept the money stashed away from them in spite of their grabby hands.  I had to hide a smug smile at that.  I held out my hand for a shake "It''s a good day knowing that you fine Hutt enforcers are protecting us from those ''damn aliens''."  I said.


    He smiled, the most brilliant shit eatingly smug pleasant smile you had ever seen.  Truly, and absolute punchable smile, which was in itself impressive given his turd face already.  "Yes, we endeavor to protect upstanding citizens like yourself from ''damn aliens''.  As a friendly reminder, stay off the streets for a day.  There has been some, unpleasantness and we wouldn''t want you to get caught up in it."  he said as he turned around and walked away.  The other enforcer looked like they were about to say something but was stopped by his fellow.  They slipped out and his fellow slipped his arm around the other and discussed life.  And by that I mean he slipped him one of the cred sticks.  Considering I gave him four the other enforcer never even realized he was short changed.


    I looked behind me at the kids and they looked at me with a betrayed look.  I shrugged, the sticks were literally sewed into the jacket, and I had to cut it open.  The pocket now just looked like a normal hidden pocket that they hadn''t noticed, but I still had plenty more.  You couldn''t be poor and expect to walk around unmolested on Nar Shaddaa.  And if there was one thing Nute was not, it was poor.


    I put the old man in the conservator after I tied him up, and tied that up for good measure.  Before you judge, the thing didn''t even work anyway.  And none of the ''food'' that was inside was fit for consumption anyway.  In fact, i doubted that any of the ''food'' here was fit for consumption.  Especially the ration packs.  Maybe the alcohol, self stabilizing... I looked around the apartment, no, probably not even that, I did not want to imagine where it was made...

 13 Worms hide under rocks

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    I stirred awake not even having realized I had fallen asleep.  The reason for that being a slight shift in one of my cuddle bugs.  I supposed they did better than a space heater in this environment.  Still, good to know I hadn''t completely lost all sense.  The slight movement had woken me from my stupor.  I would claim I wasn''t asleep if pressed, but I will be honest, I was out like a light.  But apparently not as much asleep as it would seem.


    Granted, my tensing had woken the blue one, and I had noticed her freezing up.  She didn''t put her hands in any inappropriate places, just seemed to have shifted in the night.  Besides, they had already fondled me looking for creds earlier, and knew better than to go near the weapons I had placed behind my back.  It was uncomfortable to have them there, but I was sleeping on an island in the middle of a small pond of trash. Getting up the pink one had a strange expression on her face and reached for something only for the blue one to let the four limbed octopus to latch onto her.


    It seemed like a good a time as any to look in on our prisoner, he had gotten quiet after the first hour or so, probably stressed his old heart and conked out.  Who am I kidding, stubborn old gristle like that was going to out live me.


    I raised the DC-15 ready to stun him and opened the door to the conservator.  Well, It looked like it did try to kick on at some point, but that just meant he was the only one with AC in here.  Hmm, his face was a bit red, and his breathing was a little hitched.  Probably from sleeping upside down, which at the time we found funny.  I picked him up and flipped him over while putting him back in the conservator.  That seemed to wake him and before he could say anything wis wide eyes caught a face full of stunner.


    It seemed he had loosened his bindings so I tightened those again and closed the conservator.  Then I tightened the bindings around that to make sure it closed long enough that I wouldn''t have to worry about him escaping and looking for me or the girls until after they woke up.


    I left a blaster that I had looted earlier, and forgot about honestly, on the table.  It''s stun function worked but I wouldn''t trust it to fire a blaster round.  Still, it was in better repair then most of the guns running around in this neighborhood, and was better then a scrounge gun.


    I plucked another one of my hidden cred sticks and tossed it at the edge of the couch.  The little blue girl** had such an amusing look on her face that I couldn''t help but release a quiet chuckle.  She seemed more offended that she couldn''t find my hidden cred sticks then the fact I had more, and yet a look of consternation, focus, and who knew what else.  I took a pic of it with my goggles because it was just too precious.


    As I turned to leave I could see that the pink one</a>** seemed to become distressed in her dreams, but didn''t wake.  I hardened my heart, I was a monster already, and couldn''t look after two scav orphans.  It was like looking at a couple of stray cats and walking away.  At least that''s what I told myself as I turned around.


    The blue one didn''t wake the pink one, or say anything really.  She just watched me as I left.  I was thankful for that.


    I ended up on the streets.  I could see a single board enforcer looking around, trying to be intimidating.  This was both a good and a bad thing.  It meant that the crackdown was ''still in effect'' but this was Nar Shaddaa.  The Hutts just wanted to look intimidating.  That meant, hopefully less riots, and less ganger activity.  Still, this was Nar Shaddaa, unless the people killed were truly important, which was doubtful, there was a crackdown at least somewhere, and likely multiple somewheres at any given time.  I just happened to be in the middle of this one.


    I head back to the ship, taking the smuggler''s route, which is simple enough.  With the enforcers running around I don''t even need to kill my followers, because there aren''t any!  I quickly change out of my getup, no super spy skinsuit for this diplomat.  Luckily, this minor interruption only prevented me from tertiary meetings, nothing important.  I had a much more important meeting today with an actual Hutt.  And to top it off, she sent me an escort!  I was so, soo, <i>honored</i>...


    "What is a Niemidian worm doing here as a republic dog?  Tired of sucking off senetor''s for more creds and decided to see if your ass could take on a Hutt?"  Said the Duros bounty hunter in the lead.  Because of course, if the fact that they sent a bunch of bounty hunters to escort me wasn''t obvious enough, sending a Duros to escort the Niemidian must have tickled the Hutt pink... or whatever color they change too.


    "Well, if your offering, I wouldn''t mind a round or two from a beautiful woman such as yourself."  I stated to the female bounty hunter.  Ever since my people split from her''s our ideology was incompatible.  Duros considered us disgusting and base, we considered them insignificant and only worth the credits to buy them... Which is why her bringing a hand around my throat obvious in hindsight.


    "I''ll give you a round or two, a Niemidian like yourself could never stand up to me!"  She said.  Oh, was that a challenge?  I smile back at her, even as my droids prepare to fire.  I had programed them into standby mode.  While they should have fired <i>before</i> she had a hand on my throat, their programming can be a bit slow at times.  An unfortunate time to be that slow, but not useless.  Since if they had fired, and no doubt killed the enforcers, they would have caused an incident, an incident I might not have been alive for.  While I could take on a wasted mandalorian that was too drunk to stand, I doubted I would be worth even as much as a normal thug.


    "Oh, my ship has bed chambers if you wish to ''challenge'' me in there?"  I stated, she screamed and wound up to punch me.  There was a cough from behind.  Not mandalorain, but obviously an armored merc, including full face helmet.  An interesting rarity, but not uncommon.  There were mercs with the common sense to keep their most valuable asset intact with armor.  "I believe our orders were to bring him alive and intact, ma''am."  Stated the SIC.


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    She turned back to me, seeing my shit eating grin, shaking with rage she lowered her hands.  My droids stepped in blasters still pointed at the interlopers.  "DosoDos, the great and mighty requests your presence.  We are here to escort you to his compound where the council awaits your presence, republic dog."  She stated, the heat of her glare still there.  And so was the hand imprint on my neck.  So what you will of growing up in higher gravity, she still had the strength advantage on me, hands down.


    "Then lead the way."  I stated, not holding back my sight as I looked her up and down.  Her hands gripped into a fist as she knew what I was refering too.  If she turned now, I would get a good look at her ass.  Not the best, even amongst Duros.  However, this was all a power play, as is everything in Nar Shaddaa.  She probably didn''t want to become just another Hutt slave girl.  It was why she played bounty hunter even when working for the Hutts.  And yet, I was debasing her as such.  "Your droids will not be necessary, we will protect you."  She said as she opened up a standard protection circle.


    I knew what she was doing, she was trying to prevent me from getting a good look.  Honestly, I had better looking cheap floosies waiting for me, literally, back where my Niemidian sycophants would gladly sell me their wives for favor.  But I did love a challenge, something both I and old Nute enjoyed, though different forms and different reasons.  He hated playing with the strong, and loved toying with the weak.  I was of a different opinion however.


    "I believe that I shall indeed need them, after all, I have already been attacked once already."  I stated as more B2s walked out.  I had 8 in total on the ship, I would be taking six, not because I thought I needed them, but because it would be a snub.  My ship would need less protection than I would while walking with DosoDos enforcers.  At least after the last interaction.  I would also be taking my four droidika, leaving another 2 on the ship.  Of course, there were also plenty of B1s on the mounted guns, but those were ''supposed'' to belong to the dock, and not to me.


    She looked like she would argue with me more, I almost thought she was getting a taste for it.  But her second interrupted again, gently reminding her "We have an appointment with the Great and Mighty DosoDos and shouldn''t make him wait."  I could see a vain throbbing in her head, but she still turned and walked at a fast pace, I whistled.


    Her steps hitched as she realized her fast pace had made her hips sway.  Her fist tightened again, I was wondering if there was going to be a super sonic crack or an explosion of air if she tightened her fist any more.  Well not literally, she wasn''t a wookie.  She resumed walking, though this time with a stiff military cadence.  Her fellow mercs didn''t dare to make a comment.  However, it was clear only some of them were under her command, whether she belonged to a larger unit of mercs under the Hutts, or this was all hers, I didn''t know.  But this was clearly a mixed group amongst the mercs that were glad to see her taken down a peg, even if they themselves were taken down one with her.


    The trip to the Hutt''s palace was uneventful.  No-one was going to attack a Hutt convoy of enforcers unless they knew the targets value dead to somebody else, and who that somebody was.  Maybe another Hutt would take me out, hoping to take me out before I meet DosoDos council.  Because I knew this wasn''t ''the'' Hutt council.  Maybe DosoDos thought that as a republic diplomat I wouldn''t know enough to know, who knows.  Still, he wasn''t somebody I needed to please.  So when the slave girl at the door told me that "The great and mighty DosoDos is not ready to see you know, please wait a moment."  I just turned around and started walking away.


    Everybody panicked.  Even those that did not know what was going on.  DosoDos had many petitioners, looking for a favor from the Hutt.  I wasn''t one of them.  DosoDos contacted me, and requested me on behalf of the republic.  I was here as their diplomat, but I wasn''t anybody''s doormat... Ok, well I had a list of people who''s doormat I was currently, but DosoDos wasn''t even on the list of those I had to respect.


    "What, where are you going?  The Great and Mighty DosoDos will see you soon!  You can''t leave!"  She said chasing after me.  The gaurds, a group of humans or near humans and a single gomoraen looked like they really wanted to block my way, but also ''not'' battledroids.  The mercs had less compunction to stay put, but they also knew that actually blocking me wasn''t a good idea.  So they literally just stood in my way, and still let me pass.


    "That''s great, you have a shopping district near her, yes?"  I said.  The poor girl seemed taken aback.  Of course there was a shopping district near here.  If nothing else, there was DosoDos own shops nearby, and this was Nar Shaddaa, it was one big shopping district.  "Uh, yes, why do you, you can''t leave!  Where are you going DosoDos will see you!"  She said trying to catch up as I walked the halls, trying to get out.  By now more slave girl attendants were following me, and I had a great parade of DosoDos people, including the original mercs that were looking around unsure if they should be still escorting me.


    "Well, if DosoDos isn''t ready to see me, there is nothing I can do about that, but I will not waste my time or his, so I guess I will just do a bit of shopping.  And if he can''t fit me in, I have a meeting with Berlieeb The Hutt later, I can''t be late."  I stated.  The hall grew quiet as if they couldn''t believe what they had heard.  But the did not stop following me.


    Luckily for the little door girl, an older slave girl came to her rescue.  It was clear that she was ''no longer favored'' by the Hutt as she didn''t ware the normal slave girl attire, completely clothed head to toe in elegant silks and metals like a slave girl, but not showing skin.  She had an elegant slave girl collar, and honestly, ''no longer favored'' my bright green ass.  She was obviously one of the true masters, only a step down from the Hutt himself.  Probably one of the Hutt''s bonded servants that performed the training for the other slave girls, and only answered to the Hutt and only the Hutt, and no other senior staff.


    "DosoDos will see you know, it was rude to your fellow guests, but he has done you this favor."  She stated, eyeing me warily.  "Oh, my apologies, I thought the schedule was for 11:30 curesca standard, my mistake, should I pencil him in some other time?  I''m quite busy, lots of meetings while I''m here.  Maybe I could catch him next time?"  I said.  My captive audience was aghast.  They had literally never heard such a thing.  But the old servant wasn''t so easy to throw off.


    "As I stated, DosoDos will see you now.  There is no need to move your appointment.  Though you will have to apologize to his last guest."  She said, her eyes glaring, daring me to say something.  So of course I did.


    "Oh is that all, poor thing.  I have no problem giving alms to the needy."  I said and tossed over some pagets like loose change.  Though to me it kind of was, I could literally throw around that kind of money all day and barely effect myself, it wasn''t something a normal person should do, especially not a Niemidian.  A Niemidian parting with it''s money?  There was a saying about that in our language, and it equivalated too something like ''over my dead body, and my family''s''.  The audience stepped back as if physically slapped.  For a Niemidian to give out money as ''loose change''...