A Whisper of DUST part 2: Chandrilan Nights

The crew heads back to the ship with their prisoner (whom they figure will be safe with SARR and INON guarding him) to fill SARR in on events and decide their next move.

After Evan tells them Zay stayed with Enda for a couple of nights, some pieces fall into place. Zay had dangerous information. She associated with Enda. Enda associates with Rel. Could Enda have stolen the plans? But why would she want them? Z suggests that he hire her to get her out of the way so the others can do some discreet breaking and entering. Evan supports the idea, and even volunteers to set it up. "It's what I do. Partly."

While Z keeps Enda...occupied, they burgle her rooms. Oola finds a hidden safe in the floor which contains half of the missing documents, but it quickly becomes apparent that these are only useful if they have the rest. There's also a coded journal, which Oola is able to access easily. In it, Palra says she and another prostitute (Zay, they can guess) are using the papers for blackmail. Palra knows there's a connection between this slave ring and Tatooine. The papers indicate that whoever this crime lord behind Rel is, he knows very well about DUST and its true purpose, which is notable since Oola's father has been very successful in keeping that a secret. Enda is worried because two government officials (actually Imperial spies, as the crew now knows) have been killed in the last couple of days. Rel is scared; their bodies were left outside his headquarters with the DUST symbol burned into their foreheads. It's obviously a signal to let him know they're on to him.

The next move is clearly to turn over Zey's room again to look for the rest of the papers. But before they can leave, a thermal detonator rolls into the room. Ree chops it in half, then leaps out the door after another two Mandalorians she spots fleeing down the hall. But the Mandalorians set up booby traps. Ree gets caught by a tripwire. Lydia cuts Ree out while Kedrihm'Val takes over the chase. He finds one dead in the stairwell, cut in half by a lightsaber. There's a datapad lying on top of the body, listing a ship and a docking bay. He recognizes the sense of the Force user from the giftshop roof.

At his requrest, Oola taps the hallway security cameras to get a picture of a person in Sith armor with glowing red eyes. A Chiss. Wracking her brain for any known Chiss Force-users, Ree remembers only one: Severance Tann, a Chiss Dark Sider the Jedi have crossed paths with before. But she's dead.

Setting to work on the information in the datapad, Oola learns that the ship in that docking bay has been here for quite some time. It comes from the Mandalorian sector, and is reported as having five crew. It's not listed officially, of course, but it's obviously a Mandalorian ship. Tracing and tapping their local accounts, she finds that seven million credits have been deposited to them by Rel. It looks like they're working as assassins on retainer.

Hightailing it to Trinwal's place, they arrive to discover it's already been ransacked. A speeder takes off, heading toward the port with two Mandalorians on it. Ree pursues, racing along at Force-assisted speeds to leap up onto their transport. "Want to surrender?" she asks. "Why?" asks one of the Mandalorians. She ignites her lightsaber. The other Mandalorian tosses the papers out. Ree jumps after to catch them, but they fooled her: it's nothing but a slashed-up catalog. Still, that's not enough to put down Ree Shevan. Grappling a passing speeder, she swings back up to catch up with the Mandalorians again. But they're not interested in fighting at close quarters against a lightsaber. This time, they hand over the real papers and tell her they're clearing out.

With what they came for now in hand, Ree returns to the others, wondering if they should make sure Z is okay. Popping in on the comm frequency (he was listening in again), SARR says, "Z is fine." "Alright," Ree replies. "We're not going any further with that."

The papers describe an extensive slave ring. Chandrila is simply a waystation. DUST has gotten wind of the operation and is interfering all over. Whomever is running this out of Tatooine is controlling it from Ryloth, and knows about Oola's family, who they are, and plans to kill them at their next gathering in about a month. It looks like this is the information that Zay was worried about.

Oola calls her father. Tser takes it calmly, even seeming amused. He tells her he's inclined to wait and see who's trying, but invites her friends along and suggests that they pick up Sareth Finn. They last encountered him on the commerce station in Hutt Space, and it turns out he's the one who's been killing those politicians on Chandrila.

Palra Enda agrees to seek protective custody. Ree turns to Z and tells him, "Get me Ral." ZZ returns about an hour later with the unconscious Twilek gangster. Evan Srell says he wants to come with them to Ryloth. "I'm not sure whether it's justice or revenge, but I plan to find out," he tells them. They leave Ral and Dren with Republic Security and head toward Ryloth.

After introducing Evan and Sareth around to the droids, Ree asks Evan where he got training in the Force. He tells her he trained briefly at the Jedi temple on Yavin about ten years ago, but the philosophy never really agreed with him.