Erisi Speaks to Vladison

Like a dental appointment, a particularly disagreeable and incompetent vibroweapon fighting instructor, or the supergiant sub-mantle hyperspace bypass, the best way past a tedious lecture from a snide professional superior was through him. Erisi stood and stiffened, feeling a kind of petrification well out from her insides at the notion of dancing with Vlad. She'd need the stony feet to dance with him; he wasn't particularly subtle about his motions. He yanked her around the floor with all the manner of a tugboat, and his feet stamped as though hearing an altogether different, angry beat to the ditzy music overhead. What he was really doing was ensuring she paid attention to him, and using the pretense as a flimsy excuse to keep his grimy hands upon her. As a kind of mixed mercy, his disrespect for her somehow translated into keeping his hands away from her more personal zones, only tightening his grip past his fingers when she appeared bored with him.

"You keep suspicious company," he sneered, "Or are you simply moonlighting after potential sedition for us?"

Erisi frowned up into his gaunt, sullen face. "I don't cater the seating arrangements," she said.

"I'm not interested in your dining partners," Vlad said, despite having brought the subject up himself. This was a common tactic of doublethink typical of Imperial bureaucracy. At least it indicated he was ready to get down to business. The agonizing procedure of being hoisted to and fro like a parcel of luggage with one wheel missing was drawing the moment out longer than Erisi thought it needed to last.

Vlad lowered his voice, even though the adjacent dancers (all of whom were performing the same monotonous, peppy waltz) were granting his violent motions a wide berth. "Tomorrow, a sub-vessel will be departing from the Jewel of Coruscant and disembarking at the Hutt pleasure palace on the planet below. You will be on that vessel, assume the identity we've assigned to you, and retrieve data stolen by rebel spies."

Already Erisi thought of what that process might entail: Gaining the trust of aliens (read as: non-humans) and then betraying that trust. Given her career, moral implications were the least of her concerns. Even so, Vlad saw fit to tell her this. "Your mission will involve gathering a lot of intel in a short span of time. We believe the stolen information will pass hands sometime in the next four days." Even though that much was obvious, he refrained from telling her other pertinent information so ostensible nobody would nag her about it: There was a high level of danger involved in tourist traps like these. Organized criminal syndicates were about as trustworthy as a blaster with the safety off. Skeezy lowlifes would be hiding just off the beaten path, waiting to mug or capture new addicts for illegal spice mining. The inevitable freak show below would not only challenge her intuition to its fullest, but also those human instincts which guide one's ability to communicate in those subtle albeit crucial ways.

Still, there remained unexplained questions she needed to know. "What exactly should I be looking for?" Erisi asked. "I need to know when I've gathered the information, eliminated the spies, and completed my mission."

Vlad pulled back his upper lip like a snarling Whiphid. "Despite their equally despised status, the courier isn't likely to willingly hand off the information to just any incompetent alien. They'll be looking for the highest bidder. A security station presiding over numerous lunar mining operations detected an infiltration, and vital specs were stolen. This would be useful to the rebels for planning another destructive attack, with great potential for untold loss of life."

There were things Erisi suspected he wasn't telling her. One thing she didn't wonder about was the fact that by "life" he was referring to human lives. The other thing she did question was the integrity of this data. There were always other layers hidden beneath, each one reeking worse than the last, but this was the nature of working with the ISB. At last their nauseating dance had come to an end, and with a sanctimonious, insincere bow, Vlad departed. There was still one more thing she questioned. Would his methods really provide the fastest route to eliminating this threat to the Empire without leaving any loose ends? How would she find her own way off the planet? The ISB would always be watching her, and this should have been enough cause to keep an eye on them in return. At any rate, this felt like the most direct route to accomplishing her task. She now had only to plan her disguise in time for making planetfall.