"Sorry, Shisskurr," Shard mutters, feeling poorly about the whole affair.  "Rhijans was running this, so I backed him."  The corner of her mouth twitches downward.  "For what it's worth, I don't buy you as a spy either."  The older woman takes a mouthful of food. As punishment.  "You're too smart for that," she notes around the food, and despite his appearance, Shisskurr is.  She chews slowly and deliberately as she listens, savouring every bit of the vile flavour before swallowing.

Absolution.

"Hutts," she decides - maybe it's the bad taste that made her think of them. "Look, we're in an area lousy with them.  They're a major power in this district.  You can BET they're not happy with the Rebellion or the Imperials.  More rebels means more Imperial rule here, with more pickiness about crime, because it's easier for rebels to operate where things are lax.  More Imperials means more fights between rebels and them, which isn't good for business either.  If they back the Imperials fully, they risk them moving in and taking over completely.  If they back us completely, they know we won't be terribly good for business if we come out on top."

A shrug.  "They keep us fighting, keep us working hard, both sides, while they go along accumulating information, power, whatever...I don't like Hutts.  Never have, never will.  And this just reeks of them.  Maybe it's all just a theory, but whatever is going on, I'm sure there's a pair of fatty, greasy hands in the pot."

Haarmon was about to hand over the datapad, the one that he had planned to lace with a keylogger before he 'left' it at the table for 'someone' to find, when the Trandoshan figured out what they were getting at and basically shot the whole thing into the void.

Are you allowed to be smart AND big and strong? Somehow that doesn't seem... balanced... Haarmon shook his head at the thought. This was the really-real world, and not everything was gonna fit into neat little categories.

So he shook his head and put the pad away. "Yeah sorry," he mumbles. He listens to Shard and nods. "Yeah. That could be it. It's a bugger if so. Hard to track Hutts on the Nets. So much of what they do is off the grid."

Juragga wuffed a reply, eying her schematics.  Nodding, he jerked his head towards the corridor and then set off an an ambling gait, the meaning clear: follow me.

The tech starts to follow Juragga, while studying her map of the base.  After the first half dozen paces she gives up on the latter and focuses on following the Wookiee instead.  After all he's leading her somewhere, unlike the map...

"I'm glad I ran into you.  Everybody else is too busy to show me where to go.  They just tell me to follow the useless map.  Don't they realise I have a lot to do, and only a limited time to do it in?  Would it kill them to give me a little more help?  I mean, it might even actually kill them if I don't get the reactor working properly, but do they care about that?  Oh, no... their job is more important than..."  The tech pauses and laughs nervously, "Sorry, when I get stressed I can't shut up.  People tell me that all the time.  My name's Kedra, by the way."

"Are you sure this is the right way?"

"Hutts!"  Shisskurr spits the word angrily.  "Fingers in all things."  he thinks for a moment.  A long moment.  Then continues, "Might be Hutt and spy.  Spy say to Hutt that base here.  Hutt feed story to Imperials, one bite at time.  Imperials leave Hutt alone because he passes news regular.  Imperials not know that Hutt has whole story now.  Only know what Hutt say he know."

To demonstrate his meaning, the Trandoshan breaks off a miniscule crumb from his meal and peers at it before making a big show of popping it into his mouth and swallowing hard.  "Food last long time this way."  Another tiny crumb of food disappears into his mouth...

Rhijans nodded, grim appreciation for Shisskurr's insight showing in a half-smile on his face that turned to something cold and hard in his eyes.  "That makes perfect sense...and the Hutts would have an easier time getting someone they chose to be in a position where they'd have access to important information.  An Imperial agent?  Likely be be caught in the vetting process, depending on how many ex-Imperials are up the chain of command and looking at personnel files."

He speared a morsel of food viciously.  "But a Hutt plant?  So many people in this organization are already criminals of one stripe or another, who would know what to look for?  Even if you traced them back to the Hutts, there's still another layer of cover to remove them from the Empire."  He popped the food in his mouth, chewing slowly as he shook his head.

This could be much harder than he'd thought it was going to be...

Making his way into the cafeteria not unlike a freight train, Juragga headed for the food line even as his techie follower was no doubt surprised at their destination.  Pleased to see his comrades in attendance, he hooted a greeting, then added some in depth Wookiee for those in the know:

"New techie here, says she's looking for the reactor room.  Say hi, don't let her blow up the place."

Shisskurr nods, "Yes, hard for Imperial spy fit in.  Not so hard for Hutt spy.  Hutt spies not wear perfect neat clothes.  Not salute everybody in case they ISB."  He laughs, something between a growl and a hiss...

Kedra looks around the nearly empty cafeteria and sighs, her face falling into a pit of despair and gloom, "Just my luck.  I think you're as lost as I am."  Juragga calls across to Rhijans, Shard and Haarmon, and the tech's expression brightens up again, "Are they friends of yours?  perhaps they know how to get to where I'm going?  Is that why you brought me in here?  To meet them?  I must admit, you're a little difficult to understand.  No offence.  I'm sure that, to people who know your language, at least, you speak very clearly.  Unfortunately that doesn't include me."

Juragga moves through the line quickly, though this time it isn't because people get out of his way (oddly, few people seem to want to get between a hungry Wookiee and his meal for some reason), but simply because he and kedra are the only two people in the queue, and she isn't really interested in anything to eat.  The odd couple move towards the table.

The Trandoshan grimaces, "There goes chance for peace and quiet.  Lucky has finished anyway."  He stands up and prepares to leave, picking up his tray and his datapad...

Juragga's hoots, growls, and soft roars elicited nothing but a blank stare from Rhijans, who glanced to the side to see if Shard or Haarmon understood what was going on.  For all Rhijans knew, the Wookiee was telling them that he'd found the maybe-Imperial-but-likely-Hutt spy that the Colonel had told them about...

Either that, or some bizarre inter-species attraction for the technician on his heels.  Either one seemed equally plausible at the moment.  He might even be introducing the tech as someone who had a plan for getting the slaves back from the Hutt.

The options were endless...but all most likely inaccurate.  He'd wait to see what others, better versed in Wookiee, could make of it.

"Hutts," Shard grumbles again.  It all fits.  Maybe it isn't correct, but it fits.  If that's the case, they're heading in the wrong direction, looking in the wrong places.  It could be a planted spy.  It could also be a paid spy.  After years in the rebellion, the enthusiasm could wane, the altruism get a little tarnished.  She knows this.  And some people would sell out, if offered enough.  Sufficient funds went a long way toward assuaging guilt; failing that, they could buy whatever chemical cocktails one needs to forget.

She knows about that, too, though her own choice of bottled fog never broke the bank.

"Stay safe, Shisskurr," she shoots back at her former teammate.  "Catch you later." The blank expression on Rhijans' face isn't hard to translate; it matches in the incomprehension in the tech's eyes.  "Apparently Juragga has found someone looking for the reactor core," she notes, motioning the curious pair over. "Juragga -" with a motion toward the Wookie, by way of introduction "- informs me that you're new here, and you're looking for the reactor core.  You'll understand if someone who can't find her way around going to work on the core makes me a little twitchy.  What's up?"       

Juragga nods to Kedra as he piles his plate with enough food for three humans and warbles a response.  "GrrraaaaWWWWW," he said.  Yep, of course.  That, and well, making sure she's not the spy and looking for the reactor to blow them all up.  Seemed less and less likely.  No spy could jabber that much.

He ambled over, food and techie in tow, to sit with Shard and the others.

The young tech sits down about as far from Shard as its possible to get and still be at the same table.  She carefully places her stack of datapads in front of her, and her tool box on the floor beneath her chair. 

"His name's Juragga?  He might have told me that, but I didn't understand him.  I'm Kedra.  I'm new here."  She smiles nervously as she picks one of the pads up.  "I know my way around a reactor, but they gave me this map of the base, and I must have taken a wrong turn, because it doesn't match what I've been seeing as I walked about, and everybody's too busy to help me.  Except Juragga.  He's the first one who stopped to talk to me."

"So I've been walking about for nearly an hour, and every time I go into a stupid corridor on the stupid map it turns the wrong way, or ends in a wall, or just leads to a storage bay.  And this room, see?  This room should be primary environmental control, according to the map." she holds the pad out, showing that it is, indeed, a map, "See?  It shows that we're sitting in the main ventilation pump.  I don't know about you, but I always thought it would be draughtier than this."

"So I'm lost, and I have all this work to do, and some of it has to be done in a certain order, and it all has to be finished by the end of my shift and... and I'm sorry, when I'm nervous or upset or worried I just can't stop talking.  Sorry."

Rhijans scowled a bit...not that it was immediately apparent on his face, as his neutral expression tended to look like a scowl, anyway.  But the brows pulled a little closer, the eyes got a little tighter, his jaw clenched slightly.  "You can read a reactor schematic and you can't read a base map?" he asked.  His tone could have been construed as mocking, slightly...or suspicious.

"Where'd they send you here from?" he asked.  He scooped up more of the food, popping it in his mouth to eat, slowly chewing it as he waited for an answer.

"Hand it over," Shard says with a sigh as Rhijans begins.  Snagging the map from Kedra, she studies it.  "I'm Shard," she mumbles, an absent reply to the introduction.  "That one's Rhijans, this one's Haarmon.  Juragga you know.  Sort of." 

Well, it LOOKS like the main ventilation pump room for her, and Shard doesn't have the computer know-how to figure out what's wrong.

"Maybe you've got maps mixed up or something," she offers.  "Haarmon, can you figure that out?"

Aside to Haarmon, Juragga warbles a low chipper in Wookiee to explain things.  Anyone who was fluent in Wookiee would understand, but he wasn't making any effort to speak clearly for the sake of the barely-initiated.

"With everything that's going on, a 'new' techie lost and looking for the main reactor core made me suspicious.  But, either she's really good, or I was being paranoid - she seems harmless enough."

He lifted a shaggy brow over one of his teal eyes before woofing, "Then again, so do you," to Haarmon, with a sly grin.

Haarmon reached out to the proffered databad with barely suppressed eagerness, his head filled with vague overheated thoughts at the implications of impressing two girls at the same time.

He took it and started messing with it. When Juragga started up he cocked his head to the side, listened and scowled. "What are you rawring about? I'm a fierce outlaw, you know? A wanted man! I've got fines pending in 12 systems! But. Point taken. Lemme run a li'l diagnostic here."

Haarmon takes out his PBD and hooks it up to the datapad and starts pressing buttons.

"I was at at a training camp on Priler for a few months, before I came here.  And before that at home, on Ral-Exun, my whole life." Kedra explains, her expression glum, "I joined the Alliance through a friend, and ended up here, and now I can't seem to do anything right.  I'm going to end up sent somewhere else, or home."

The mere thought of being sent home looks as though it will reduce her to tears...

"Reactor schematics are easy.  They make sense.  This place doesn't.  Parts of it are natural caves, and other parts are constructed, and the natural parts double back on themselves and cross over, and I keep ending up lost."

Shard coughs.  Delicately.  "Your map.  That...that isn't actually this area of the base," she points out. "Who gave that to you?  And who said it was?  Because nothing on that map resembles this area in the slightest."

Not to mention the utter lack of a place named 'Cafeteria.'

One eyebrow rises. "No offense, but...does this sort of thing happen often to you, outside of this base?"  She's known a few people with outrageously poor senses of direction.  On the other hand, it might not be her fault, if someone else gave the maps to her.

Rhijans said nothing, still watching and listening with a calculating eye.  She could be as new as inexperienced as she claimed...or it could be a front.

Or she could be a decoy, unwittingly sent in to distract anyone who might be watching over the reactor or any of the adjacent areas.  He scowled, internally, the emotion barely registering on his impassive face.  Too many unknowns, still, he thought.  Shard's question might help clear that up a bit...knowing who'd sent the tech to this part of the base looking for the reactor could be helpful.

Haarmon's fingers patter across the keys as he digs into the datapad. He mutters a few indistinct curses, some of which sound vaguely Wookie. He does, however, notice the tensions among his teammates. He was still smarting somewhat from the Trandoshian seeing through their clever ruse. But maybe this one was the spy?

One could always hope.

He looks up at the tech. Shrugs. "Best I can tell your pad's just broken. Let's get it sent over to the quartermaster and get you a new one, huh? Or I could lend you mine."

"My shift supervisor gave it to me, along with all the others."/<Aqua>  One hand reaches out and pats the stack of pads in front of the tech, and several of them slide off, clattering on the tabletop.  One even makes it all the way to the floor.

<Aqua>"I have a terrible sense of direction." Kedra admits with a sigh, "Makes me glad I'm a tech and probbably will never be trusted to go on field missions.  My brother says I could get lost in my own room...  Well he used to.  Before he... "  Now, if anything, she looks even more depressed.

Haarmon's mention that the pad is broken, brings a brief smile, tinged with sadness, "Broken?  That's probably my doing.  I bet it happened when I...  Well... I was lost and the map was useless, so I threw it at the wall.  Only it bounced back and nearly hit me in the face.  So I kicked it.  Twice.  Then a third time, for good measure."

Another sigh... "I'll take it to the Quartermaster.  He'll probably get annoyed at me, like most other people.  Can anybody tell me how to get there?  Or, better still, take me to him?  Because if I go on my own I'll just end up lost again."

Rhijans' suspicions ratcheted up another notch.  While it was not totally implausible that someone with such an incredibly poor sense of direction actually got enough training to be an effective technician, he was skeptical.  In his experience, people who couldn't find their way to some of the key points in a base like this usually didn't survive long enough to become proficient at much of anything.

He didn't say anything, however, just continued to eat, wordlessly, watching Kedra carefully for any flicker of emotion that didn't fit, any indication of competence at odds with the flustered exterior she presented.  He wasn't sure if Shard was buying the story, but it certainly appeared that Haarmon was...

Shard's face screws up slightly.  "You kicked it?" And she's a technician?  "I'd hazard the Quartermaster won't be happy, no."  Leaning back, she studies the young woman for a long moment, taking the chance to check out the reactions of her team.

Juragga?  Nothing as yet.

Haarmon?  If he's playing, this time, she can't tell.

Rhijans?  Nothing.  And she knows him well enough now to say it's not a good sign.

"I think taking you to the Quartermaster would be quickest," Shard decides, standing.  Then they can get some better idea of what's up.  "If you get lost that easily, that is."  She studies her food.  "It'll save me having to eat...this," the older woman confesses.  "C'mon."

There's a small pause as she stares blindly at the wall, her gaze seeing through it, and space, and time. "I'm sorry about your brother," Shard finally states, a parade of faces dancing before her mind's eye.  none of her relatives, and it's hard enough just like that.

Juragga had started out very suspicious of the young techie, which was why he'd led her here instead of to the reactor room.  Then, as he had listened to her interact, he'd become more and more convinced she was harmless.  Inept even, maybe, in an endearing sort of way.

"RuuuUmmmmfff?" he woofed, raising a shaggy brow as he addressed Shard.  Maybe check her orders with a supervisor?

"Well, of course I kicked it... I don't have a blaster on me."  Shard's commiserations regarding her brother bring a nod, mumbled thanks, and a flush of red to her cheeks.  Standing, Kedra reaches under the chair to retrieve her tool box, then puts her hand out to Haarmon for the pad.  "I'll probably have to show that to the Quartermaster to get a new one."  She adds it to the stack of other pads, almost knocking them over again.

"Thank you for your help, Juragga.  You were very kind.  The rest of you too.  It was nice to meet somebody who could spare a little time to try and help me out."

"So, which way to the Quartermaster? she asks, smiling at Shard.  Her mood seems to be gravitating towards "cheerful" again.  Though "less gloomy" might be a better description.

She follows Shard out of the room, leaving Rhijans, Juragga and Haarmon to wonder what might happen if she actually finds the reactor...

Out in the corridor, Kedra stops, looking about, "I don't think I've ever been in this hallway before."  Which is odd, considering that Juragga brought her into the cafeteria from this direction.  "Before today, I mean."

Rhijans watched as Shard led Kedra out of the cafeteria.  Under different circumstances, he probably would have just let them go and not worried about it.  As it was...

He set his fork down on the tray and stood up.  "I'll be right back," he said.  If he didn't say anything, the other two would probably want to come with him...and while he trusted Juragga to be relatively unobtrusive in following someone, he had no reason to think Haarmon would be any good at it.  Walking at a casual pace, he left in the same direction as the two women, trying to keep enough distance between them to not be noticed.

How successful he would be at that, he could only begin to guess.  It'd all depend on how many others were roaming the base at the moment, to help mask his presence.  But if his suspicions were correct, Shard wasn't safe being alone with the other woman, and part of his ego was still smarting from having lost Jacobs.  He wasn't going to sit back and risk it happening again.