"I can't decide if you're supposed to be my handler or my ticket to prison," Rusty said.
The setting, in almost any other situation, could have been romantic. There were almost certainly folks on the hotel staff who thought that was the case. Pretty young woman with a big guy trying way too hard to hide his identity, they'd seen it before. It was a shame, really. If they knew what was actually going on, they'd probably have called the police.
Sera grinned, turning up the charm to 11. It was wasted on Rusty, but he appreciated the effort.
"Relax, big guy," she said. "I'm just here to make an offer, nothing more."
But there was something more, and they both knew it. Her heart rate increased slightly, pupils twitched, and their was a slight tic in her temple as her blood pressure shot up just a little with the lie.
It had been her idea to meet up on Zeltros while the Wicked Grace was still in the shop. The window was tight, but she managed to arrive the evening before he was supposed to pick up the ship and then the Captain.
"Right," Rusty said with just enough derision to let her know that she had been caught in a lie.
"Damn, but you're a sharp one. Combat sensor package?"
"Originally. It's been upgraded and modified so many times over the years, there's no real name for it anymore. So what's this gig, and why's it so important that you felt the need to race halfway across the galaxy to meet face to face?"
Sera, who was wearing a dark brown traveling tunic, extracted a large dossier from a hidden pocket within.
"That's everything we have on you and your 'hobby,'" she said. "Feel free to read through it."
Rusty picked up the folder and began to leaf through it. Dates. Planets. Crime scene photos. It was like a greatest hits list of his, well, greatest hits. Mostly they were scum. Small time crime bosses, drug dealers, pirates that took a more classical approach to the whole pillage and burn thing. The police never found the killer, because they didn't really care much about dead criminals. Some of them even appreciated the irony of the deaths.
There were a few, a couple dozen actually, that didn't meet that profile. They were Sith, and they died badly. Most were caught unawares. Long range rifle shots. Throats slit in their sleep. Perfectly good ships that exploded for no apparent reason. The folder only had about a tenth of his kills in that realm, though he couldn't blame them. 900 years is a lot of time to work, and there were a lot of bodies that were never found.
"What is this," he asked. "Blackmail?"
Sera scoffed.
"Hardly. We know perfectly well what would happen if we threatened you or your Captain. Think of this as a resume."
"What kind of employer hands their prospects their own resume?" Rusty didn't have eyebrows, exactly, but he still managed to convey his sense of disbelief.
"Not your resume, smartass," she replied, grinning mischievously. "Ours. We wanted to show you what we could do, with less than a week's lead time. You've been a naughty boy, Rusty."
"Statistically speaking, I'm good most of the time," he said. "But now that we've met the quota for witty banter, how about we get down to brass tacks. Who are you and what do you want?"
"Who we are is less important. What we want is to recruit you. Not full time, but there are some things we're not properly equipped to handle at the moment. The closest we have to a wetwork guy retired not long ago."
That rang all kinds of alarm bells in Rusty's head. What the hell kind of intel agency powerful enough to dig back through several centuries worth of unsolved cases spread over three quarters of the galaxy didn't keep several trained teams of operatives on hand?
"I think you either need to tell me who you work for, or leave," Rusty said coldly. The implied threat was clear.
Sera frowned, started to leave, but sat back down.
"I'm not supposed to tell you this," she said. "Actually, they'll be really pissed, so you didn't hear this from me."
The fear in her voice was real, Rusty noted. She was betting that, if they recruited him to handle the dirty stuff, he wouldn't kill her if the higher ups decided to off her. Most intel agencies run by governments took a fairly nonlethal approach to handling personnel problems, but the world of independent organizations was cutthroat in the most literal way possible. Even relatively benevolent agencies would dispose of operatives that proved problematic.
On the one hand, she was willing to break security in a big way to bring him into the fold. That was risky for an agent. It was also a sign that she believed in the cause, and believed he was what they needed. Well, [bleep].
"You remember how Palpatine nearly wiped out the Shard species when he took over?"
Rusty spitted her with a glare that would have melted through the glacis plate of a main battle tank.
"I'll take that as a yes," Sera said. "He got most of you. A few such as yourself proved too difficult to take down easily, but most of the survivors made it through by going to ground. They disguised themselves as service droids, or astromechs, anything small and inconspicuous. Palpatine was more worried about Iron Knights, and his hunters often overlooked the droids they didn't think any self respecting warrior would crawl into. So, they spread out. They kept in touch, spread word about safe areas, or any hunters in the area, or folks they thought might be sympathetic. That's how the Shard Network got its start as the premier intelligence gathering organization that no one has heard of."
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