When he woke he felt pain all through his head and his energy was sapped . Trying to move was hard and stressful to even attempt, like walking up a steep hill backwards. Nothing but noise came from outside his window, and his CPU's hummed in white noise. Somewhere down the hallway a maintenance droid buzzed around, a door slammed up stairs, then a fit of laughter, followed by banter in some language Radda didn't understand. He had had all of the noise he could take, so as a solution he put on headphones and lurked around his office space like the dead, just bending and clawing and shuffling things- putting them in their right place, organizing files.
To his dismay, his query to find his cargo last night was unfruitful. It appeared that no shipment was sent to him and none were expected.. at least thats what the data said, so he broadened his search and called the Nar Shadda cargo company 24/hr help line. They told him they were sorry to report nothing could be found and that if it was something law enforcement would confiscate, they technically couldn't report it anyways. That seemed obvious to Radda, but he'd never be so stupid as to receive "hot" items without stashing them inside a pedestrian cargo. At last they said to Radda that he could leave his contact with them and they will reach him if anything comes in. That's when they asked him what his shipment was, and at that Radda paused for a long second feeling apprehensive and a bit defensive at the same time. The woman on the other side sensed his apprehension and told him in a rusty voice that this was only for insurance and his answer doesn't have to be written in stone. So Radda comes out with it and tells her "Durasteel AC units. They were supposed to come in on a bulk freighter early today."
A few hours, and two pots of coffee later, Radda is pulled between pacing around and paying out credits to a few of his underlings, and in turn briefing others with current bounties, all the while listening to the silence of his head phones. The headphones were corded so instead of it dropping to the ground to be tripped on, Radda wraps the cord around his shoulder and secures it with his armpit. The compression of the cord around his shoulder somehow helps calm him down when it tightens around him. Radda paces around finally into the bathroom to brush his teeth and have a look in the mirror. He's still wearing last nights clothes: a faded gray shirt with plenty of holes, a black leather jacket and a Naboo officers cap he found in a thrift store hanging on a single hook in the back collecting dust. His face is unkempt but under the dirt a good looking face lays beneath with cool gray eyes like enchanted ashes, looking deep into their own reflection.
Right then as he was rooting around the back of his molars with a string of floss, the com unit at his front door buzzed with an urgency that sounded like "Let me in!" Radda threw away the floss and sped to the door, hand reaching at his blaster, and eyes wide open now.
"Who's there, you gotta name?!" He says. Then finally presses the video screen on and he can see Karthata standing there shifting his weight from one leg to the other like he's got to piss.
Karthata looks into the camera and presses the coms audio pad. "It's me Radda, we need to talk, buzz me in."
"Yea... I can see that." Radda says back to the antsy trandoshan. He buzzes him in. "Come up."
By the time Karthata makes it to the door, Radda has taken a few swigs of whiskey from his flask and put away his headphones in a nest of its own cord. The trandoshan comes in and Radda offers him some coffee and has him sit before he makes him dizzy. It's hard for Radda to contain his anger right now. Right now he can only think about how fun it would be to strangle Karthata to death then drink the rest of his coffee. But these where just daydreams, he knew Karthata would best him in a fight.
Finally he gets what he wants out of the creature- the point of him being here. Karthata tells him the shipment was taken, pirates had gotten to it before ever hitting the bay. He couldn't identify what clan they might be from or what species they were, for they were all masked and well trained in sabotage. Before Radda could even ask, Karthata goes on.
"I lived, yes. They left me alive instead of risking killing one of their own. You see there were four of us, we were all well rested and fed from the night before we set off. We were expecting a clean run, none of us thought we'd be boarded.. but it happened. I think these pirates were pulling off planned, coordinated raids on specifically your freighters, and they seemed to know what they were looking for, and they found it-"
"Fuck."
"- Yes, somewhere in your web there will likely be a rat. "
"And you lived how?"
"Like I was saying, we weren't expecting trouble, but it came and knocked us pretty hard. Before they boarded they hit some of us with tear gas then stormed in, masks on, gunning down the first two ship hands who had happened to be playing cards in the cargo hull where they boarded. I heard the blasters go off from the upper deck so i ran to my cot and grabbed my blaster and came up to the cockpit to tell the pilot. He thought he needed a weapon so he foolishly left the cockpit to grab his own blaster. He got it, but he never came back. After a few dreadful moments I could hear a couple of the pirates outside the cockpit door, laughing and boasting at there take over, telling me to come out of hiding. It was tense, but then as a stroke of luck they backed away and left the ship damaged and bare, and spared me only because they expected I had a weapon and had the tactical advantage as far as I'm concerned."
"...We need to find that rat Karthata, and no, I haven't ruled you out yet. As of now, I'm halting all of my other shipments, and won't be needing you to escort them any further, at least until I get this situation under control yess? Looks like I 'm going after that cargo...those sub-repeaters aren't cheap."
Karthata stopped cold in mid-sip, looking up at Radda. "Going after the car-go?" The last word kind of fumbles out of his carnivorous mouth in two parts of bewilderment.
"Yes, I have tracking beacons equipped with every shipment I come to possess. Now get out of my place, I need to work!" Radda says with haste, then pulls out a cigarette, lights it and brings up both hands to his head rubbing at his temples, sitting forward in his big black chair mad and distressed.
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