Hurricane.  It was the only way to describe it.  Maybe typoon.  Who cared.  Garrett looked out the window of the highrise safe house he'd taken up space in.  He looked at nothing.  The outside was a blur, nothing but water.  Lighting.  Wind.  Rain.  The heavy duty sheet glass was the only thing that stood between him and the hundred mile an hour winds of the storm that had kicked up in the past hours.  Three eyes confirmed. The voice came from his datapad as he looked out into the blur.  Three storm eyes!  Garrett closed his eyes, blocking out the vision of…nothing.  The vision of dark chaos.

He opened his eyes again, a second later, and hit the screen of his datapad a few times.  A view of the system popped up, ignoring the weather on the planet as it rattled the windows of the apartment he was waiting in.  There was no detail, too broad of a view for that.  But that didn't stop the databases from accessing.  The signal strength wouldn've been abysmal, but this was intelligence network he was accessing.  The safe-houses still had hard lines.  Just in case.  Thankfully.  Whoever thought of that five hundred years ago deserved a post-humous promotion, because the beauracracy of the Empire had never gotten around to getting rid of them.  He couldn't access the general net for all he'd tried out of curiousity.

Six ships.  That was all.  Sure, there were the planetarey defense forces.  There was shipping.  Those were identifiable.  But there were six ships that the network had no clue where they had come from and what they were doing.  Five on the planet.  One on the edge of the system.  He closed his eyes again and sighed.  He shook his head.  He could see it coming.  Granted this had the feel of a tail end of a masterful con than an actual military operation if all that was needed to start it was a megastorm and six ships.  All that was needed.  Humorous idea, that.  FOUR Stor–….. The transmission cut off in the middle in a cloud of static, the storms too much for the signal to punch through from the space station.  Before long the radar would disappear too.  If they were coming from the same source anyway.  He couldn't tell.  He'd pay money to tell how they stirred this up.  It was genius.  He wished he'd thought of it first.  Theoretically.  They'd managed to do it.  Whoever they were.

*Beep beep*

He stared at the Comm ear piece that sat on the  table in front of him, a look of slight consternation playing over his face.  The  military SIGINT network couldn't punch through, but somehow, someone was getting something through to his comm unit?

*Beep beep*

He picked up the earpiece, put it in his ear and tapped the datapad, encrypting his location before he hit yet another button.  "Yea."

"Garrett," was all a female voice managed to say before she was yanked away with an audible gasp.  Not just a female voice…

"Kiera?" he asked, confused.  What was–

"So he wasn't lying," a fairly deep voice said.  He recognized it.  The Bruiser.  One of the top enforcers for the Black Sun.  "You two do know each other.  And your name is Garrett."  There was some static as lightning flashed outside, but the signal came in relatively strong again, "…assume you know where your sister lives.  We're there.  You have three hours.  Do the math."

The signal cut off in a burst of static just as the door behind him burst open in a crash. He turned from the windows in a flash to see four people entering, blaster carbines in hand. Two were pointed at him. He froze, too late to go for a weapon, too late for sudden moves.  They all had masks on, but a female voice came from a semi-tall figure keeping her rifle trained on him, "Hands. Please." The other two did a room-by-room sweep as he raised his hands slowly, his heart beating faster as he waited.  He didn't raise them very high, just out to the side.  Away from his side arm and in plain view.

Normally he'd say something sarcastic. But. He wasn't really in the mood. He waited. There were only two or three rooms. He hadn't even been past the main living room yet, but ostensibly, it wasn't a big safehouse, for all of its location in a highrise. He stared at the one who spoke as they swept the apartment.  Dark operations suit, all one piece.  It fit the environment of the night.  They were all dripping wet.  The two men finished quickly. "Clear," one said as they came back. "Could be something hidden, but nothing dangerous in the rooms we can access."

Garrett would've smirked. But. He wasn't in the mood for that either. He wasn't in the mood for a lot of things all of a sudden. One just had to wonder why.  Things always went wrong on his job. Just not these things.  He just waited. The…woman…or so he thought, gave a subtle nod, and one of them came forward, shouldering his carbine as he did. Garrett kept his hands raised as he waited. Relaxed. Calm.  He took a breath.  As the soldier, or whoever he was, started to pat him down, Garrett gave him a quick, but light, headbutt to the face. While he was stunned, he grabbed him in a bearhug, pulling the man's sidearm, and switched it to stun. He fired, mostly at the ground but the area caught some of his right leg. They collapsed as Garrett fell back against the shield glass behind him, the storm still playing behind them. Not changing the setting, he held the blaster to the man's temple.

"Ever seen a stun blast set off one centimeter from someone's brain?" Garrett asked in a quiet whisper. Lightning blasted behind them, lighting up the room.  No thunder, heat lightning.  "Not much different from full power at that range. Sort of just fries the circuitry."

All three had their carbines trained on them, two had taken a few paces to either side to give him a wider field of fire to think about. Smart. "If you kill him, you won't survive the night," the mystery leader said.

"I don't have time to debate my value with you, whatever the hell you are," he muttered. "If you want your man alive, whether I survive the night or not, you're doing one thing." She gave no indication she was paying attention, much less caring what he was saying. He continued anyway, "The datapad on the table. Access Code 3-3-6-8-2-A-8. Call up the last call run through the local network." A few seconds and she finally lowered her carbine, taking the step or two to the table. She picked up the datapad and tapped the screen a bunch of times. The call he'd gotten from the Black Sun enforcer played over the air, storm interference and all, for them all to here. "I've got an appointment.  I go by you, or through you. You have one minute to decide. Or we see who lives and who dies."

Another few seconds of thought, she gave a hand signal, and their weapons lowered. She pulled the mask off her face, the light seemed to favor grey eyes masked by auburn hair. "Very well, you will go by us, Mister…"

"Mendal," He said, in good form. "Garrett Mendal." He extracted himself from under the agent, rolling him off, as the others pulled their masks off, a dark-haired male, and a blonde female. Garrett dropped the pistol on the stomach of the man he'd stunned as he stood. He struggled to pull himself up against the glass to sit up all the way. His leg was still knocked out. It would be for a while. He yanked the comm unit off the man's belt, disconnecting the headset as he did. Their encryption wouldn't match the comms he had. "Sorry about your guy. Corner. Backed into. Act of desperation." He walked over to a dead end coner of the room, flipped open a tile on the wall to reveal a number pad and tapped a rapid series of digits.

"Val'kia Navin," was all she answered in a fairly business like manner. Garrett froze. He gave her a curious look, head angled slightly.

"One of the enigmas themselves," he said with a chuckle as the wall across from them opened up to reveal a small arsenal and a computer decorating it, a door revealed a small hallway. No one knew where it went. She gave him a questioning look as he walked up to the computer, "They'd probably forgive what I'm about to do just to know what you look like. All they've had for years is a name. Not much to go on in a galaxy of trillions." Garrett gave an indifferent shrug, "This little treasure trove should make up for my little stunt. Datapad." He held out his hand as he tapped other parts of the screen in front of him. She handed it to him, and he tapped a few more buttons, hitting connect. He slid his hand across the screen, and a red exclamation point appeared on the big screen in front of him. He tapped it, a loading bar appeared.

"What are you doing?" Val'kia asked.

"Let's call it scattering a digital footprint," he answered. "With how fast you guys found this place, I don't trust them not to break into our–the Imperiel Personnel Database–on the level my file is at damn fast." The loading bar continued across, about halfway now.

"Useless information," she answered. "About you."

"Just on the server." He shrugged, casually. A language all its own. "I don't want anybody else finding us until this is done with."

"I could've–"

"My sister."

She shrugged, her own statement, as he picked up an earpiece and tuned it for the comm unit he'd taken from the man he'd stunned. "Channel Three?" he asked. She nodded. "Test. One two three," he said in a normal tone of voice. She nodded again. He grabbed a second blaster off the wall to accompany the sidearm he already had, and picked a non-encrypted comm unit off the shelf. He tossed it to the man lying down. "Not sure who you're going to reach with this storm, but, whatever." He pulled his brown trenchcoat, still soaked, from the chair. "Let's go," he said to the rest and led them down the opened hallway. They didn't move until she nodded for them to follow. Discipline. Not even ten feet and there was a stairwell up to the floor above, a garage with an enclosed speeder in it. Non-descript, but one of the faster models, just by the looks, forgetting whatever modifications they might have thrown into it. Solid black.

Garrett got into the driver's seat, and sat there for a minute as they got in. He pushed a few buttons and the repulsors kicked to life with a hum, lifting the speeder off the ground of the garage. Val'kia sat on the passenger side, the nameless spies in the back seats. He sat there in thought for a second.

"What're you wait–" Val'kia started to ask.

Garrett answered in a reflective tone, "I just left a 'rebel' with free access to the intelligence network." He took another breath. "By standards, I'm no longer Imperial. If they find out it was me I'll have a target over my head. But I don't care." He strapped in carefully, the others around him did as well as he hit a button to open the doors to the stormy city wilderness outside. "Someone that knows what I did handed me to the other side. It's one of two people. And I have two main contacts with that group for them to hand me to. If I survive this, think on whether you want a retired agent you don't have to worry about or a turned agent you can use." He put the speeder into gear, the engines hummed at a higher pitch. "You're helping me. I appreciate that, so it's your choice. Either way, hold on tight. We've gotta go halfway around the world in this mess in less than two and a half hours. I'll drop you guys off a building over and walk in, distract them."

He floored it, the speeder launched out into the storm. The windshield was so blurred out by the pouring rain, the screens projected a wireframe of the city for them.