Rothana was as hostile as it got. A pro-Republic, anti-Sep planet fully on board with the Empire. It was hard to argue with the hand that feeds, and Rothana did big business as a subsidiary of Kuat Drive Yards.
So an agent, even one with a legitimate diplomatic cover as a Senator's entourage, in this case his driver and pilot, kept a low profile.
Much of his work here was not the usual; in those instances, he would rub shoulders with swoopers and smugglers, fellow Huttese speakers, and form some bonds and maybe start the process of establishing information brokering with them. Rothana, however, was a fortress world of the Empire, and so it required a degree of delicacy.
It was a heavy research world, so surveillance was a given. And while Clang was a pilot first, he knew through previous experience how to identify undercover surveillance and then had the benefit of training for this role. It wasn't a volunteerism thing; they had to pry him out of an X-wing cockpit and transfer him. But it was an important job and senators needed good pilots too. The trick here wasn't watching for surveillance, it was identifying the surveillance and its quality without giving any indication that they were actually aware of it. It was the cat and mouse game, and the Rebels working for Senator Ordo were content to catalogue the extent of their tails for if and when they needed to do something about it.
The Rothanans were so heavy on security that the supply of counterintelligence agents, especially their best, could not keep up with demand. It was a droid heavy surveillance net. Omnipresent, but automated and therefore vulnerable. On the other hand, despite the puckered, monocultural nature of the New Order, with its uniforms, marching in lockstep and everything running on time, there was still a seamy underbelly; it was, after all, the Outer Rim. It was muted compared to a Hutt-run planet, but the gamblinng dens, prostitution, loan sharking and smuggling of things, mostly drugs, continued unabated. In fact, Rothana probably had more of it before, because the Empire clamped down on people's lives and that miasma of fear led to people seeking their diversions a little harder...particularly on a company world where the company culture was also relentless and highly competitive.
And so his mission was to run back and forth. Someone needed takeout food? Clang. Someone needed any sort of shopping? Clang. The others were involved in driving, dropping off and running errands, and this was how they were able to notice patterns in their surveillance as well as lay down their own patterns, recon alternate routes that broke from the pattern if needed and, essentially, put their tails to sleep. Meanwhile, Clang made slow contact with guarded locals that were always worried that they might be talking to someone that was stooging for the Empire.
With a little luck and persistence, he'd already started to patronize a couple of these holes, the sort of seamy places that garnered little attention but where business was inevitably conducted. Then, with consultation with Leto, he'd started buying up the debt of a few low level types to start gathering information in exchange for easing their debt, slowly but surely.
Eventually, they got what they wanted, a contact with one of the local rebel groups through a local underworld lowlife after a bit of cat and mouse. The Senator was here to inspect Rothana's new line of small shuttle craft, a proposed upgrade to the old LAAT/i dropship, and the Senator was in a committee that could theoretically fund such a thing, but the real job was to establish lines of communication with local Rothanan resistance cells. After the Kamino uprising, Rothana fell out of favor, and there were hard feelings about it as other companies, core worlds more entrenched with the Empire, received more and more of the business.
A meeting now and, perhaps, down the line, smuggled equipment for the Rebels? Perhaps an underworld buy. It was all possible once Senator Ordo or one of his functionaries had a high level enough meeting where they'd work to bring the local into the Rebel Alliance fold.
"Jojako Harlush at the Rokarokatusawa. He wants a time to meet." He reported the others in the common area of their starship, which was, in addition to being fast and stately for the purposes of a Senator, also shielded from eavesdropping. Clang spoke Huttese; it was a lingua franca in the parts of the Rim he came from. His squadron, the Intruders, spoke it in the X-wings, to the despair of the core worlder military command establishment. It was a collection of pirates, smugglers and other ne'er to do wells, but once in X-wings, they also took to the hit and fade nature of the war. There was a bit of a twinge of loss that he felt over being transferred, but he shoved that well down to the back of his mind.
"That translates to the Brain Damage Bar," he added, with a grin.
@jackdaw@ethanjory@gunther@captainbritton@sanity43217@jester
So an agent, even one with a legitimate diplomatic cover as a Senator's entourage, in this case his driver and pilot, kept a low profile.
Much of his work here was not the usual; in those instances, he would rub shoulders with swoopers and smugglers, fellow Huttese speakers, and form some bonds and maybe start the process of establishing information brokering with them. Rothana, however, was a fortress world of the Empire, and so it required a degree of delicacy.
It was a heavy research world, so surveillance was a given. And while Clang was a pilot first, he knew through previous experience how to identify undercover surveillance and then had the benefit of training for this role. It wasn't a volunteerism thing; they had to pry him out of an X-wing cockpit and transfer him. But it was an important job and senators needed good pilots too. The trick here wasn't watching for surveillance, it was identifying the surveillance and its quality without giving any indication that they were actually aware of it. It was the cat and mouse game, and the Rebels working for Senator Ordo were content to catalogue the extent of their tails for if and when they needed to do something about it.
The Rothanans were so heavy on security that the supply of counterintelligence agents, especially their best, could not keep up with demand. It was a droid heavy surveillance net. Omnipresent, but automated and therefore vulnerable. On the other hand, despite the puckered, monocultural nature of the New Order, with its uniforms, marching in lockstep and everything running on time, there was still a seamy underbelly; it was, after all, the Outer Rim. It was muted compared to a Hutt-run planet, but the gamblinng dens, prostitution, loan sharking and smuggling of things, mostly drugs, continued unabated. In fact, Rothana probably had more of it before, because the Empire clamped down on people's lives and that miasma of fear led to people seeking their diversions a little harder...particularly on a company world where the company culture was also relentless and highly competitive.
And so his mission was to run back and forth. Someone needed takeout food? Clang. Someone needed any sort of shopping? Clang. The others were involved in driving, dropping off and running errands, and this was how they were able to notice patterns in their surveillance as well as lay down their own patterns, recon alternate routes that broke from the pattern if needed and, essentially, put their tails to sleep. Meanwhile, Clang made slow contact with guarded locals that were always worried that they might be talking to someone that was stooging for the Empire.
With a little luck and persistence, he'd already started to patronize a couple of these holes, the sort of seamy places that garnered little attention but where business was inevitably conducted. Then, with consultation with Leto, he'd started buying up the debt of a few low level types to start gathering information in exchange for easing their debt, slowly but surely.
Eventually, they got what they wanted, a contact with one of the local rebel groups through a local underworld lowlife after a bit of cat and mouse. The Senator was here to inspect Rothana's new line of small shuttle craft, a proposed upgrade to the old LAAT/i dropship, and the Senator was in a committee that could theoretically fund such a thing, but the real job was to establish lines of communication with local Rothanan resistance cells. After the Kamino uprising, Rothana fell out of favor, and there were hard feelings about it as other companies, core worlds more entrenched with the Empire, received more and more of the business.
A meeting now and, perhaps, down the line, smuggled equipment for the Rebels? Perhaps an underworld buy. It was all possible once Senator Ordo or one of his functionaries had a high level enough meeting where they'd work to bring the local into the Rebel Alliance fold.
"Jojako Harlush at the Rokarokatusawa. He wants a time to meet." He reported the others in the common area of their starship, which was, in addition to being fast and stately for the purposes of a Senator, also shielded from eavesdropping. Clang spoke Huttese; it was a lingua franca in the parts of the Rim he came from. His squadron, the Intruders, spoke it in the X-wings, to the despair of the core worlder military command establishment. It was a collection of pirates, smugglers and other ne'er to do wells, but once in X-wings, they also took to the hit and fade nature of the war. There was a bit of a twinge of loss that he felt over being transferred, but he shoved that well down to the back of his mind.
"That translates to the Brain Damage Bar," he added, with a grin.
@jackdaw@ethanjory@gunther@captainbritton@sanity43217@jester
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