Nico's Gambit

Beryl's Errands

The rickety speeder's rough ride made Odette afraid it had shaken loose some of her teeth but it managed to get them to Aurek Base without running into any rakghouls or scavengers. She'd had quite enough of rakghouls dealing with the disaster of a delivery for Doctor Vernen. It taken all her self-control to not strangle the crazy, crafty Republic scientist. She might actually have done it, if Corso hadn't become somewhat of an annoying conscience for her.

Now they were at Aurek Base and looking for some dude named Ovold.

"Who in their right mind names their kid Ovold? Rhymes with mold."

After asking around they found he wasn't actually in the base. He'd set up a little camp down the road watching out for scavengers and rakghouls.

"Great," Odette said. "More walking."

"You're in a mood, boss," Corso said.

"Well, I wouldn't be if something hadn't tried to eat us every time we tried to repair those signal responders Doctor Vernan blackmailed us into fixing."

"But we did it," Corso replied cheerfully. "And we're still alive!"

She just about punched Corso in the face but he had wisely stayed out of her arm's reach.

"Let's go before I'm tempted to do something to you that hurts," she said.

They trudged down the road until the saw what must be the camp. Or what must have been a camp. The tent's canvas was stained and ripped, flapping in the foul-smelling breeze. A short Zabrack stood looking off into the distance, his goggles strapped so tightly to his head that it bit into his already red skin causing angry looking wounds and abscesses around it. Odette made a face and looked at Corso. He didn't look any more impressed but shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you Ovold?" Odette asked.

The man jumped in a 180 degree turn and inspected them through his goggles. "You're not scavengers. I can tell. My goggles can tell the difference. What do you want?"

"Uhhh, we're here to pick up those core samples you have for Beryl."

He shook his head vigorously, sweat flung off his head in all directions. Odette had to jump back to avoid getting splashed. "Don't have them. Scavengers came and stole everything, including the core samples. Sorry."

He looked like was about to turn back around.

"Hey!" Odette said. "That's not good enough. You were supposed to have them, so you go get them. Now."

"Can't. The only thing my goggles do is let me see things. If you want the samples, you're gong to have to get them yourselves. I'm not going into the camp. That's suicide. The only reason they didn't get my goggles is because I used an industrial strength glue to attach them to my head. They were slipping off. Now they fit just fine."

Odette stared slacked jawed at the man for a minute. Who would even do that? Oh, right. The spawn of the people who would be stupid enough to name their kid Ovold. She turned to look at Corso.

"Great. Today just keeps getting better."

"I know where they took the stuff," Ovold said, apparently not yet done with them. "There's an old army bunker to over there called Rasaaran Storage Bunker. That's where they take it all. But its guarded. I hope you guys don't die."

Odette took out her datapad and pulled up the maps of the area Beryl had given them. It did indicate the bunker wasn't too far from where they stood.

"Let's go check it out, I guess. See if we can get away with sneaking in."

When they got there, that day's surprises were not over apparently. The camps were loosely populated and sloppily organized. It would be easy to get around them. Not only that, but no one guarded the outside of the bunker.