"Of course," the woman smiles. "The great battleground of politics, my preferred arena. Of course that's not what Jago would prefer, is it Jago?"

"No ma'am," the giant of a man agrees humourlessly.

"Mr Vaerson - or are you an officer - allow me to introduce myself. Lady Estela Nash, of Kuat. This is my Lifeguard, Jago Calomm," the man nods solemnly, while the lady extends one hand with a smile.

Marcelus sweeps down and kisses her lightly on the offered hand. "It is a pleasure to meet you, milady. You are very observant and right, of course. I'm currently serving our noble Republic as a lieutenant. We all have to help to fight the rising darkness in these dire times. As you can see it is almost impossible to maintain even the most basic standards in this war. I am delighted to meet a such a high and beautiful lady as you on this warship. I fear that the captain required my immediate attendance, therefore I regrettably must leave you for now, Lady Nash. But I see forward to other opportunities to talk later on this journey. For the meantime, fare thee well, milady."

"Indeed gentlemen, I shall bid you good day, though I am sure I shall see you again at some point in our voyage. Come Jago," She smiles and turns to stride away. Her lifeguard nods stiffly to you then turns to follow his mistress through a hatchway leading down to the vessel's arterial walkway, a route along the ship's spine that exposes walkers to a view of the stars as they move fore or aft along the ship - the scenic route across the cruiser.

Your own route takes you to the mass transit maglev down the hall from you, should you wish to take it. You may linger for a short while more, but no doubt the ship is waiting to leave.

Rast watches Lady Nash and Jago leave, mostly out of curiosity. "Well, she certainly seemed to like you," he mentions to Marcelus.

Marcelus nods towards Rast while his eyes lingers on the hatchway Lady Nash had disappeared through, his mind lost in thought, "Apparently, but do not confuse common courtesy for courtship. I am wondering what circumstances could have brought a member of a powerful Kuati house deep into Hutt space..." He shortly shakes his head, "Nevertheless, we shouldn't keep the captain waiting. The sooner we can jump into hyperspace the better."

"Hey, you said "courtship," not me," Rast jokes.

Marcelus chuckles, "Yes, you are right. It feels good to be back in a safe and civilized place where there is no sense of certain doom bound to happen hanging in the air."

"Lovely business, that," Ashrym offers with a glance at the departing Lady Nash.

"But," he continues, "you are correct, in that we should not keep the captain departing. And let's not forget a good, long shower."

"TeeNine requires a nice oil soak," The small droid chatters, hastily rolling across the floor in order to catch up with the others, "Long time in low-power mode = stiffened joints and cold circuits."

His receptors swivel around the dome, letting him take in the sights around him. He focuses his attention on the maglev, "TeeNine already late // Captain shouldn't wait more // {TeeNine also wants to examine ship's astrocomputer}"

"Right you are, TeeNine," Rast says.

You pass through the hatchway indicating a passage through the ship's main spinal conveyor. The maglev car sits before you, humming gently as it levitates over the single rail. You board it and settle in on the seats - or into the magnaclamps normally used for cargo, but now accommodating one small astromech - when the old man in diplomatic robes enter from the lounge in a rush. He boards the carriage just as it is setting off, and waits for you to clear the station before lunging towards Rion.

"You've spoken to them, the man and woman?" his spittle-flecked words are spat in the confused Mirialan's face. "They're hiding something. I don't trust them. I won't trust them."

The next stop rushes up, and he hastily leaves the car, glancing all around him as if to ensure he is not being followed. The venue is seemingly random - life support, of all places - but before you can move to follow him the car is gone, heading on towards the bridge, leaving the strange figure to disappear from sight. By the time you reach the bridge, he has faded into the background of memory.

The bridge of the Rendili Star is in full flow when you arrive. Unlike most transports this one is a refit class, with a smaller bridge. The captain's chair is at the top of the space, the tactical consoles below it with operations to the left and engineering to the right, while communications, sensors, helm and other positions are in the lowest tier of consoles.

The ship's captain, a Duros, spins his chair to face you as you enter from the rear of the bridge.

"Ah, our honoured guests! Welcome, I was just about to give the command to go to lightspeed," he turns back to the front, leaning forward to address an officer manning one of the lower-level consoles. "Astrogation, are we clear."

"Aye aye sir, we are clear of the planet's gravity well, L5 point is behind."

"Very well. Helm, make the jump."

"Aye aye sir," there is a rumble of sudden power, a jolt causing you to struggle to keep your footing, and then the blur of hyperspace fills the window.

With a sharp nod of his head, Ashrym says, "Thank you, sir. I'm not the best wordsmith, but I don't think any of us can properly express how **** glad we are to be aboard the Rendili Star." He smirks a bit, then gives a nod toward Marcelus and ammends, "Well, maybe my colleague might be able to properly express it. He's the wordsmith."

Edit: Forgot to bold the speech portion to ease readability.

"And we're **** glad to have you aboard as well. Captain Zarvos Kozik, pleased to meet you," he salutes. "And now we're in hyperspace I can safely tell you that the we're so happy to see you because of what that little droid's carrying," he pauses. "It does still have the data disk doesn't it?"

Rast saluted the captain in response, then looked at TeeNine expectantly.

"I should think so," Jeren speaks up, though he too turns his eyes at the droid. They did not have to use that particular "trump card" after all, so, barring any searches of T9 made by the Hutts he did not know about, the card should still be in their possession.

"Excellent. If you'll follow me?" the Captain leaves his chair. "You have the bridge Mr Hance," he addresses the XO, and then leads you aft into a conference room at the rear of the bridge. Inside is a desk, with several chairs along its length. Advancing to the head of the table, Kozik activates the holo-projector mounted in the centre of the table. The room lights dim as a blue cone of light is projected upwards, blank without a data input. "Could I have the disk?"

"Thank you for your help, Captain Kozik. I'm Lieutenant Marcelus Vaerson. And yes, as far as I know, Teenine should still have the data disk savely stored." Turning towards the droid, he adds, "Don't be shy. Give the disc to the Captain. We are not in an hostile environment anymore, you can trust him."

"Affirmative." The small droid beeps and boops out, rolling over to the captain and ejecting the disk, "Held on with all my circuits."

"Excellent. We've been waiting to get this data more than you know," the disk whirrs as the holographic systems interpret the data it carries. After a moment it begins to display, scrolling rapidly through communications logs. The sight is extraordinary - rivers of data, streams of communications and lakes of text form in the air above you - but it soon begins to slow. One by one the data flows wink out, or become distorted or turn an ugly red colour as they encounter firewalls or encryptions. After mere moments, the file recovery has ground to a halt, a single flow of random characters pulsing an angry red in the air. Kozik collapses into his chair with a sigh.

"I'd been fearing this would happen. Of course, the SIS had warned me that the data would be encoded when you recovered it, but I had been hoping it might not be as bad as all that. Our decryption systems could decode a good part of it - that was the surface data you saw, we can skim that off for analysis on the way. But that's not a long term solution, which brings me on to our destination," he shifts the display, transferring to a galaxy map that fills the room. You are suddenly surrounded by floating glowing orbs - the stars and planets of the galaxy. They are split down the edge of the Mid Rim: most of the galaxy in a bright, noble blue; the elements in the Outer Rim held by the Sith are a dark red, the colour of organic viscera. A third region, that held by the Hutts, is displayed in sickly yellow.

Kozik indicates a tiny blue dot in the centre of Hutt Space. "This is us, the Rendili Star. Now that we're in hyperspace, away from any prying eyes or curious ears, I can tell you our destination. I don't need to tell you that this mission is vital to the entire war effort, but I would reiterate that fact to you - and also the total secrecy we must ensure. Nobody outside of this room can hear what goes on within. The only people who know our destination are the XO Commander Hance, my Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Pirard and I. We are heading for Ord Hekate," he pauses. "You do know about Ord Hekate right?" blank faces.

"Alright, you're aware of the 'Ord' designation of certain planets. It signifies an ordnance depot? Well we got rid of most of them after the Great Hyperspace War, decentralised the ordnance after we realised they were fairly easy to avoid. However since the Sith were halted on the edge of the Rim we've been fortifying certain Ordnance worlds in the Mid Rim - like Ord Hekate - with additional weapons and supplies to create fortress worlds. But Ord Hekate is different. It's also home to the SIS' forward headquarters - hence the secrecy. We think the Empire is planning a new offensive, and we need to decode that data to find out the truth."

"Excuse me, Sir, but how could we help decode this data disc? I am an expert spy and the rest of my squad are soldiers. We are no encryption experts, well at least apart from Teenine."

"Unfortunately Lieutenant, I doubt that even your droid could manage to decrypt this data at any point in the next thousand years or so," he smiles ruefully. "Both Republic and Imperial encryptions are becoming ever more secure - an information arms race if you will, each side competing to be the more secure. We have advanced decryption engines - vast computer banks capable of trillions of calculations per second - but there are very few of them. At this stage, your mission is now to protect this data long enough for our operatives to decode it."

"Ah, now I understand, Sir. I am fully aware that our facilities at Ord Hekate are top secret but would it be possible to study anything important about the SIS headquarters there - weaknesses, defenses and so on on our trip? We should better be prepared." Marcelus stops, thinks a moment and adds: "I don't know much about data storage. Would it be possible to make copies of the encrypted files? Therefore we could assure that at least one copy reaches Ord Hekate. Or would that be too dangerous? The Empire could find one of the copies..." He shakes his head and asks: "By the way, how safe is this trip? I have full confidence in your abilities captain, but not even you would stand much chances against a Sith war fleet. What about the personnel and the passengers. How far can they be relied on? I had already the honour to meet a high lady of a Kuati house and her bodyguard. On the way to the bridge we met a mysterious man as well who looked like a lunatic hermit and gave us some cryptic advice, warning us about the Lady Nash. Who are these people? Could they present Security risks?... And I think I must apology, Captain. I have no right to harass you with a myriad of questions."

"Hmm...that is perplexing. I have a full list of passengers in my files, I can forward that to the computer terminal in your quarters along with planetary details for Ord Hekate and its base. As for the passenger you encountered, I'm sure there will be a rational explanation once we can identify him and speak with him. Regardless, I can assure you that Lady Nash and all our passengers are entirely trustworthy - they all received ample security screening before receiving their boarding clearance.

"As for producing multiple copies, that would be risky," Kozik pauses, considering his options. "I'm not willing to trust digital copies. If the Empire discovered them it would undermine our element of surprise. However I could have hard copies produced. How many do you feel would be sufficient - we don't want to widen the range of individuals with knowledge of our mission's full parameters.

"And as for the safety of the trip, we came through here three days earlier and it was entirely secure. One part of our journey takes us through the void between two systems, one Republic and one Imperial - however I feel that that is the only really risky part of the voyage, and besides while we're in hyperspace there's little they can do against us without installing hyperspace mines, even assuming they know we are coming. All in all gentlemen, I think that for this voyage you can enjoy three days of well-earned rest."

"We'll look for your forwarded information, captain," Rast saluted once more. "Was that all that you had for us?"

"Indeed. As I said, it's a three day cruise, so make the most of it. I can have one of the crew escort you to your quarters, and I'll have the data files uploaded shortly."