Long ago, in a galaxy far away...

[PurpleXVI]

Argon perused his ill-gotten data for a moment, then saved it all to his datapad before uploaded it to the ship's databanks and purging it from his own pad.

"It doesn't look all that intriguing, I'm afraid," he told the Bothan, calling it up on a screen and pointing the data out, "There are only three ships large enough to carry small amounts of people or material, the biggest can bring ten men, not quite the stuff that a major resupply operation is made out of. Though I suppose they might have to use smaller ships if they don't have a proper landing pad yet or want to stay undetected."

"Look it over and see if you can find any connections, if you can't, I say we continue investigating that building for the moment. If that turns out to be a dead end, we can try getting into the hangar of one of those three larger ships, we should be able to glean their travel data from their computers, or maybe even stow away on one of them."

He leaned back into his pilot's seat for the Nth time, "I say that once we've found the base, and preferrably gotten close enough to identify it, maybe even managed to get inside..." He briefly considered the reward they might be able to attain if they actually damaged the base or made it inoperable, as well as what a service to the Empire it would be, "Then we focus on breaking out our contact, because then we can make a breakneck run for it out of this place when he's free without having to worry about being stealthy or any such bullshit."

Quite pleased with what was, at least to his ears, a well-made plan, Argon allowed himself a smile that swiftly turned into a worried grimace, "Say, Sorkuk, remember that 'your ship is being cleaned'-guy yesterday? Considering that the starport officials apparently have access to our ship all the time when we're not here, I think that we should make a point of going over every inch, nook and cranny every time we've all been gone from the ship and return. It would be rather depressing, not to mention potentially painful, if all our well-laid plans were ruined because of a single listening device."

(OOC: Details regarding the data checked with the DM, not just made up.)

[Kazilan]

Sorkuk examined Argon's data while the pilot spoke. He snorted at the mention of the starport officials.

"It'll be a hassle, but definitely a good idea to keep an eye on what they do to our ship. We can probably rig up something to let us know if anyone boards. Nothing too sophisticated, maybe just some sort of silent infra-red alarm."

The Bothan paused to think on Argon's plan before continuing.

"I agree that we should focus our efforts on discovering the purpose of that building. If we can complete this mission without the contact, it would be much easier to let the Trandoshan run wild with explosives on our way out, freeing the contact in the process."

The Bothan scratched at the fur on his neck as he studied the data on the screen. He downloaded the information on the ten ships to his datapad and took a seat in the back of the cockpit.

"I'll see if I can find anything linking any of these ships to the Rasbon Corporations." The Bothan peered intently at the data, hoping to spot a connection between it and what he had discovered about the Rasbon corporation. He also ran a quick check on the newsnet for any linkages between the private individual ship owners and the Rasbon corporation.

[Caleb808]

Then why even open your doors? Barney thought as he sneered and walked out the door. He headed to the government building and went to the records department to look at a book or console detailing the penal codes for the planet. He wanted to see what other bizarre laws they had and which of them would only land him in jail for a day, so he could meet with the group's contact if he was indeed there.

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Sorkuk, Argon
While looking for a connection between the ships and the corporations, Sorkuk noticed something that to him would have been plain to anyone doing the same. The two largest ships were owned in the names of the CEOs of the two Rasbon corproations, and the third large one was a publicly owned vessel for the private use of the planetary governor.

Their talking about a plan didn't have any results. No security personnel stormed the ship, and no alarms sounded. If there was a listening device on the ship, it was being watched by the most inept security officer they had ever encountered, and so were in no danger from it.

Barney
The Duro simply waved at Barney as he walked out the door. Either he was very confident of the Trandoshan's return later, or he didn't care.

At the library, Barney easily found a terminal open in the judicial area. A search for penalties with a one day incarceration had nearly ten thousand results. Reading all of them would take weeks, and the Trandoshan didn't have the sort of time for that. However, the top ten, entered probably in order of regularity of occurence, were public intoxication, being outside without any undergarments covering your lower half (this one was under debate of whether it should apply to Hutts), jaywalking, loitering, vagrancy, soliciting prostitution, petty theft (goods not amounting to more than ten credits), failure to pay a parking ticket within a week, making an obscene amount of noise, and parking a speeder in a no-speeder zone.

[PurpleXVI]

"I wonder if Barney's getting into any trouble?" Argon thought aloud, as he went over Sorkuk's data, "And I wonder what we're going to do with this data. Track the ships when they take off? Try and tail them stealthily? Break in and stow away or some such? They've probably got some tracking equipment here for watching incoming ships, but it'd probably take more skill than we'd have to get access to it."

He punched up the Full Refund's, as he was already calling it on the inside of his head, specs on a console and examined a few statistics, then punched up a technical manual on another screen before cross-referencing some numbers, "Hmmm... Tailing them is out of the question, they can both go faster than us and scan longer than us. We could do it, but they'd know we were doing it, so unless we intended to ram them into the tree canopy and interrogate the crew, which I am not wholly against, it would be tricky. I guess we'll need access to their ships somehow, if we could just get their flight logs, it would all be so much easier..."

[Kazilan]

"Of course Barney is getting into trouble. I would guess that's what he's good at."

Sorkuk leaned back in his seat as he considered their situation.

"We could probably get access to one of their ships. Maybe pose as a cleaning crew?"

He shook his head to clear away the idea.

"There must be surveillance devices in the docking bays. Maybe we could hack into them and monitor the ships. Once we know they are empty, we could work our way inside and access the flight data. Or maybe there are droids that have access to those ships - we could reprogram one to download the flight data and retrieve the droid later."

[PurpleXVI]

"I like the droid idea," said Argon, "If we work together, I'm sure we could have that done in a few minutes of work. Getting in ourselves would be harder, though, they've got guards and security codes. And an erratic droid is less likely to point towards us than us actually being found in there."

He slapped Sorkuk on the back, "It's starting to turn out to be a good thing that I brought you along," he gave the Bothan what he thought was a friendly smile but which, in reality, just made him look like a humongous jackass, "If you look for some droid specs and prep for 'surgery,' I'll see what they've got around here. There should be some in the hallways, anyway, I'll check and see if they visit the hangars."

Not waiting for his collegue's reply, he headed out of the ship and went walking down the starport's hallways, keeping an eye on the various droids. Trying to see what models there were, and if any of the ones in the normal hallways ever made a turn into the hangars. If it didn't seem like it, he'd return to their hangar and see if there were any maintenance doors, figuring that they might be used by droid cleaning and repair crews, to avoid opening the doors out into the hallways where people walked and accidentially giving the wrong people access to hangars they weren't cleared for.

[Caleb808]

Barney returns to the ship to drop off all his property so it isn't confiscated once he's taken in to custody. He tells Sorkuk "Watch my stuff. I'm gonna see if our contact is in jail. Might be gone for a while." then walks off to find the orange religious nuts. When he finds them, he looks them up and down and states loudly "With those clothes, you're obviously whores. How much do you charge for a Mandalorian Snowcone?"

[Kazilan]

Sorkuk bared his teeth at Argon's back as the pilot exited the ship.

"You brought me along?" He shook his head and turned to face his workstation. "I'm partnered with a jerk and a brute. Fantastic."

The Bothan pulled up specs on a variety of droids used in general maintenance of hangars and starships, searching for one that could be programmed to perform their task quickly and efficiently.

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Argon's trip through the hangar revealed many droids to him. Several new arrivals had protocol droids in their retinue, and astromech droids were as always a common sight in spaceports, going between the various hangars to affect repairs of the ships, though their range was limited. It seemed possible to Argon that some companies had ships in more than one hangar, and they owned the astromechs going between them, as each one had at most a three hangar range. None of them ever went into the privately owned hangars though.

Each of the shops and bars were maintained by protocol droids with service packages. Cleaning droids patrolled up and down the hallways, sweeping, vaccuuming, and buffing the floor in their path. They did not seem to be aware of any people, and didn't move to avoid people. This may have been a design flaw or the setting for optimal programming. Behind a large transparisteel bay door were five binary loadlifters, thowering behemoths meant for loading several tons at once into the cargo bay of a ship.

Barney's speaking with the religious sect got the group in orange to look at each other and chatter amongst themselves very quickly in a language Barney could not comprehend. They may have been discussing their prices for a Mandalorian Snowcone, trying to figure out if any of them knew what it was, or simply professing their outrage at the request. After roughly ten seconds of this chattering, one of them turned to Barney and asked, "I'm-a sorry, could you, ah, tell us what this, ah, thing for which you ask is?"

With the two others gone, Sorkuk was able to conduct his search in peace. A general search brough up severla hundred results, and limiting the search to starports of the size of the one they were at, the local terrain, and their quadrant of space narrowed it down to about ten results. Further specifying of the search, bringing it to their specific starport and one a couple systems away, brought it down to five.

The results returned were standard R4-series astromechs, the cleaning droids out in the halls that Argon had just encountered, a relatively small droid used for vent cleaning, the shop-running protocol droids, and security bots. The smallest of these was about three feet cubed, that being the small vent droids. So far he hadn't seen any of those though, but that would be the easiest to obtain and reprogram if they could find one. The next easiest to program would be the security droids.