Chapter Thirty-Five

“This is the place?” Taylor asked. She craned her neck back to read the sign above the entrance. It was a glowing board, set within a sort of sleek metal casing. She didn’t have the faintest clue what it said, exactly, but it was a nice, clean sign on an equally clean building.

Not knowing what the sign said didn’t mean she couldn’t make assumptions based on it.

Antar Five, or at least this one city on the planet, was clean. The buildings had fresh coats of paint on them, or were made of materials that didn’t weather, and the streets were scrubbed free of the kinds of grim she expected to build up with constant traffic.

It wasn’t a utopia. Her bugs found plenty of trash, and a few camps on side-roads that clearly belonged to the homeless and destitute, but the city wasn’t a hole either.

“This is it, yes,” Asajj said. “The Antar Five headquarters for the Gotal Seperatist Movement.”

Taylor nodded. “Good, good,” she said. “Do you know the leadership?”

“No, but Count Dooku did send word that I would be here. You as well, I imagine,” Asajj said.

Taylor waited for HK47 to finish translating before she nodded again. “Great. Let’s hope we don’t make too poor of an impression. Are you familiar with good cop bad cop?”

“Assertation: Master, may I play the role of bad cop?”

“I was hoping that Asajj here could be the good cop while I played bad cop,” Taylor said. “I’m certain she can exercise some creativity and assure the nice politicians we’re about to meet that we’re on their side. Right, Asajj?”

Ventress looked like she’d bitten into whatever the local equivalent of a lemon was, but she didn’t bow out or insist that she couldn’t do it.

Grinning, Taylor straightened her back and stepped into the headquarters.

The interior was appointed in about the way she expected a lobby to be. Large chairs, some empty space, a few pointless shrubbery things in big planters. There were some aliens lounging around, minding their own business.

At the end of the lobby was a desk manned by a pair of vaguely humanoid robots.

Taylor walked across the lobby to the machines and paused before one of them. “Hello,” she said.

The droid spoke back at her, its tone and the speed of its reply too much for her to catch more than a few words. “Uh, we wish to speak to the person in charge,” she said.

The robot replied to her too quickly again.

“Query: Permission to begin bad cop routine?”

Taylor considered it for a moment. “Granted.”

HK47 shot the droid.

Bits of shrapnel flew back into the space behind the counter while the whine of HK47’s handgun continued to echo across the room.

“Sithspit,” Asajj said.

Taylor didn’t know what that meant, but she added it to her vocabulary anyway.

Stepping to the side, she paused before the second droid. “Hello, we would like to speak with whomever’s in charge here. We were sent by Count Dooku.”

“Suggestion: Answer the query, you pitiful discount-rack excuse for a droid.”

The droid looked at Taylor, then HK47, then past her to where Asajj, Tattletale, and the rest of Taylor’s droids were gathered. There were customers behind those, mostly people working hard to get out of the room.

“One moment please,” the droid said in Basic.

Taylor patiently waited a moment, until the few bugs that were on the floor above started to move around in something of a panic. She narrowed her eyes and focused. A lot of the people above were rushing to one person in particular, someone who was spitting orders and direction the others were hastily following.

There were a lot of guns tucked away in the office above. Mostly holdout blasters, but one or two enterprising office workers had rifles.

Taylor imagined it was some pretty unique office equipment in a city that seemed outwardly so peaceful.

“Come on,” Taylor said. She moved past the desk and to a doorway. There was a stairwell on the other side. The door, of course, was locked.

Sighing, Taylor grabbed her new lockpick from the small of her back, lit it with a snap-hiss, then jammed the saber into the edge of the doorway so that its lock melted off. She stepped to the side, then gestured into the stairwell. “Now would be a good time for you to go play good cop,” she said.

Asajj eyed her. “Seriously?”

“Consider it a test?” Taylor tried.

It wasn’t exactly an ideal situation, trying to calm down panicky people who may or may not be expecting an attack. Still, Asajj stepped into the stairwell, and with a frustrated grunt, zipped up the stairs with a saber in each hand.

“Commentary: You are aware that Asajj Ventress is unlikely to have received any training when it comes to social interactions, and my personality profile of her suggests that she is easily angered and prone to lashing out.”

“Yeah, I know,” Taylor said. “Honestly, this entire thing turned into a mess the moment I mentioned bad cops. So we might as well give Asajj some experience while we’re here.”

Tattletale bleeped and wharbled, and Taylor turned towards the R3 unit. “Partial Translation: The tin can is suggesting that you allow it to connect to the building’s network so that it can slice into its no doubt lacklustre security.”

“That’s not a terrible idea,” Taylor said. “In for one crime, in for another. Go ahead.”

The droid whistled an affirmative-sounding hoot, then rolled to the back of the counter where it jacked into a dataport tucked away there. Taylor waited, half her attention on the floor above where Asajj had reached the top of the stairs and was holding the door open.

She was wisely keeping her head from poking around the corner. The office workers above had a lot of guns, and they were all trained towards the stairwell door. It looked like she was trying to negotiate with the gotal that had been giving orders to the others. Judging by the increasingly frustrated gestures Asajj was making, it wasn’t working out so well.

Tattletale beeped and blorped and Taylor turned towards the droid. “Find something?” she asked.

The droid squealed, then imitated a dial-up modem at Taylor.

“Summary: The droid has found poorly-encrypted messages sent between the local leader of the Gotal Assembly for Separation and someone claiming to be an office supply seller. They are clearly a front for some sort of no-doubt illegal operation, one that isn’t used to operating with any sort of secrecy.”

“So, the boss here’s talking to our Roshu Sune friends,” Taylor said. “R3-C2, can you track down their location?”

The droid shrilled a negative note.

“Can you give us some good guesses?” Taylor asked.

This time her reply was a positive tone.

“Okay, then that’s somewhere to start. If they’re even halfway clever, then they’ll be split into cells. We’ll need to play whack-a-mole to find the people in charge, and that’s just on Antar Five. It’s very possible that the main cell, and the leaders, are on Antar Four, a world away.”

“Suggestion: Allow me to visit the most obvious local cell. Convincing Rhetoric: I am fluent in six million forms of enhanced interrogation.”

Taylor stared at HK for a moment, then slowly nodded her head. “Okay. But, only on certain conditions. I don’t want to hear about this on the evening news. And keep losses of life to a minimum. These Roshu Sune people are only adversaries because it’s convenient to make them that way. It wouldn’t take a big change for them to be on our side, so we don’t want to eliminate them outright.”

“Acknowledgement: I understand, Master. Excited Statement: I will ensure that no one is alive to remember my presence.”

Taylor glared. “That’s not what I meant, HK47. Think of it as a challenge, if you want.”

“Reluctant Acceptance: Very well then, Master. But only because I enjoyed my role as bad cop. I will endeavour to keep a record of the event in my memory banks for the foreseeable future.”

“Right,” Taylor said. “You have fun now. And don’t get blown up.”

“Statement: I will ensure that any explosive attempts on my person are disastrously fatal to anyone attempting them.”

Taylor watched the droid go, then turned back to the counter. “Come on, Tattletale, let’s find a way upstairs. Asajj seems to have gotten things under control.”

The droid blorped a questioning sound her way.

“I can’t tell if you’re wondering how I know, or want to know how we’re gonna get upstairs.”

One beep.

“Just assume that I can see things around me, regardless of any physical impediments, alright?” She patted the droid on the top of its domed head. “Come on. Asajj looks a bit too smug with herself for her own good.”

***