2 ABY – 09 Golf – 6 Taungday (Manress) The party spends 3 days aboard the Rebel light cruiser before the fleet drops into normal space. C4-BL3 busies himself exterminating computer viruses. After finishing ship repairs and modifications, Cheebs finds info on the Dai Bendu in the cruiser’s data banks, and he and Kantarra try some mock lightsaber combat. Surprise! – Kantarra had kept one of the training sabers among her personal belongings, so they weren’t all stolen by Kiarra. Cheebs fashions a crude physical training saber that works OK for sparring with the training lightsaber.
As soon as the fleet drops out of hyperspace in the Manress system, the officers of the light cruiser inform the party they need to fly the Porgatu to the flagship (the Geist); General Syndulla wants to speak to them. They also can collect their payment there, and they’re given an R2 unit to transfer to the flagship as well. (This unit has been furnished with C4-BL3’s virus elimination and data encryption protocols.) The party duly flies over to the Geist, landing in its cavernous main docking bay.
A crew of Rebel technicians is assembled there to perform the necessary swap-out of the Porgatu’s 2 light laser cannons for the 4 heavy laser cannons they’re given as partial payment for the Trionex. The remainder of the payment takes the form of 25,000 credits. Feeling well rewarded, Cheebs donates their two old laser cannons to the Rebel cause.
While the Rebels and the droids work on the Porgatu’s latest – and possibly last – weapons upgrade, Kantarra and Cheebs have an interesting talk with General Hera Syndulla, in person this time. She wants them to work as their own independent Rebel cell to gain intelligence on Imperial doings and thereby gain the Rebel Alliance’s trust. Two of the things she’s most keen to learn is why the Empire is seeking out Force artifacts and what the Inquisitors are up to. Kantarra & Cheebs offer some of the intel they’ve gathered already up front as a gesture of good faith: Kantarra’s close observations of Imperial activities on Ktil plus the Porgatu’s sensor & comm logs from that planet. They also offer up similar intel from Tython and what they know of the Sith. They have many questions for General Syndulla as well, only some of which get answered: The name of the Inquisitor (?) who killed Lorik; Any data she has on the nefarious Kiara; And their Mon Cal contact, among other things. Syndulla dubs the party’s Rebel cell “Centaur” and gives them comm encryption and channel ID for communicating with the Rebellion as well as a transponder code of sorts which will identify them as friendlies to any Rebel ships.
Syndulla agrees that the party’s existing mission to turn in Crag’s bounty and thereby stop future bounty hunters from coming after him is priority one. Also, hearing about Lorik and the Jedi’s quest for them to return (their nameless object) to Mon Calamari, she remarks gravely on how any mission given by a Jedi must be carried out with all possible speed. But beyond these two things, she also gives them astrogation data (gleaned from an old Jedi starfighter, R3-M3 later discovers) that can take them from their current location of Manress to the Ambria system. And she gives them a mission to salvage certain hyperdrive components from the wreck of a capital ship that lies derelict in the Ambria system. These components, she says, will be directly useful in effecting badly needed repairs to the Geist’s damaged hyperdrive. After their conversation and verifying the heavy laser cannons’ installation, the party takes the Porgatu out of the flagship’s hangar bay, and the entire Rebel fleet jumps away.
2 ABY – 09 Golf – 7 Zheliday (Ambria) Aiming first to contact Gwar and finish their current mission, Cheebs plots a course for the space station orbiting Ambria III. After most of a day in hyperspace, they arrive (early, even for their improved hyperdrive). Although “The Back Room”‘s traffic control tries to delay their docking for several hours, Cheebs finds them open to bribery and makes a very showy landing in the former mining station’s portside docking bay (bay 1, platform 3).
Cheebs, Kantarra, and C4-BL3 venture together into a tech bay in the asteroid’s interior, where the droid connects up to the local network. Cheebs & Kantarra find the interstellar communications facilities. They’re offered a holo booth which Cheebs thinks to check for bugs. It’s filthy. A second room, hastily offered, tests clean; Kantarra speaks with Gwar. Gwar says an agent will be en route to collect (the evidence of Crag’s death, i.e. his amputated arm, and the rigged camtono), and to expect them in 12 hours.
While C4-BL3 gets his favorite flavor of data overdose (the kind from a new network), Cheebs and Kantarra decide to kill some time at the local shops. Their first stop is at Akino’s weapons shop. The Kyuzo shopkeeper sells Cheebs a liquid cable dispensing tool and tries to interest Kantarra in a variety of weapons. Akino also advises them to check the Xexto Key droid shop for possible buyers for their (battle)droids. They plan to hit the droid shop next.