"Liora! Nei! Dex! Get in here!" shouted Malik Schmidt, editor of the Galactic City Herald, from his office.
"Coming, sir!" called Neo as she entered the office.
Liora got off the comlink with her newest informant, Cutter Dahn and headed to Malik's office.
Dex finished reading the paragraph in his book, set it down and casually strolled to the office.
"Thank you so much for joining us, Dex," Malik sarcastically quipped. "Word just came in. Barret Athaka Pell's private speeder crashed. The SecForce is on their way. I want you guys to give me a full report."
Everyone knew Barret Athaka Pell was the president of Pangance Dynamics, and one of the wealthiest men on Coruscant, if not the galaxy.
"So what's the scoop that you received on this little crash?" Liora asked of Malik.
Nei pulled out her datapad and opened the file she already had on Pangance Dynamics to review and amend it. She noticed that Barett owned a custom enclosed PL-90 Luxury Speeder.
"The news literally just came over the SecForce comchannel. There isn't even any feedback from the SecForce since they haven't arrived yet. The report says that the speeder exploded on impact, and there is no word on who was in the speeder when it crashed."
"Alright, well I'm gonna go contact my informant on the link then I'll get right over to the scene." commented Liora ask she exited the office.
"Contact them on the way. I want to be first on this one," replied Malik.
"Yeah, yeah that's what I meant." Liora mumbled under her breath.
Nei got into the back seat of the company speeder and began monitoring for any reports on the HoloNet as well as researching background on Barret Athaka Pell and his Luxury Speeder.
Liora punched in the link number for Cutter and waited till he answered the communication. Cutter Dahn replied that he hadn't heard anything about the crash yet, but he would keep his ears open. Liora thanked Cutter and ended the communication. Then she hopped into the speeder next to Nei.
As they approached the crash site, they could see SecForce had cordoned off the area and weren't letting anyone through. SecForce officers recognized the Galactic City Herald speeder and waved it through. At the crash site SecForce investigators had already begun examining the wreckage and bagging up the (admittedly quite few) larger pieces for more detailed analysis at the labs.
"Why was the speeder so obliterated?" Pondered Nei aloud. She then went to the speeder crash and looked for the speeder's computer core to download while using the excuse of instructing the camdroid to make hologram recordings should anyone question or being so close to the crash. The data was incomplete and damaged and the SecForce wasn't going to let her do it if they caught on, but she managed to insert some computer spikes and get the data that was there without any officer noticing. She then examined the crash itself to see if anything looked odd or out of place. Nothing jumped out, so she went to some nearby officers.
"Good day, officers, I'm with the Galactic City Herald. Would you care to comment on whether or not there were any survivors?
"No, ma'am, there were none," one of them replied. "But we found two bodies in the wreckage."
"Any idea who they were?"
"We only know that one was a Gran and the other was a Cerean. We have no further comments until positive identification is made and relatives are notified," the officer said.
"Cerean? Is it possible that Pell was a casualty?"
The SecForce officer had no comment.
"Where were the bodies taken?" Nei continued.
"The bodies were taken to district 8011's morgue 38."
While Nei and Dex were looking about Liora noticed one of the SecForce officers that was alone cataloging the evidence and went to speak with him. "Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you have been able to see anything that could have caused this wreck from the stuff you have gathered so far?" Liora asked the officer.
"Based on eyewitnesses, it seems like the coolant pump failed and the power generator overloaded, but that's just speculation until the lab has had a chance to analyze it," the Ithorian officer replied.
"So do you think that the craft's engine was tampered with?" Liora questioned.
"I do not have the analysis to determine that at this time," she said.
"So what would a girl have to do to get a first look at the analysis once you have it?" Liora asked the officer.
"That depends, how much do you want to see it?" asked the Ithorian, quietly.
"Well, I'd be willing to come to some type of payment agreement with you if you were willing to be one of my full time informants." replied Liora.
"If you can keep me happy, and out of trouble, I could probably let you in on a few of the inner workings of the SecForce. Here…" the Ithorian whispered as she surreptitiously dropped a data chip on the ground.
Liora looked around to make sure no one was coming up on their conversation and said, "How much to keep you happy?"
The Ithorian straightened up. "I'm sorry ma'am, but I can't give you any more information than I have. You'll need to move along. The SecForce will have an official press conference when we have our findings," she said in a slightly louder than necessary voice.
"Thank you for all your help officer." Liora stated as she bent down to tie her boot lace and she picked up the chip. While kneeling she slipped her comm number into the side of the officer's boot, stood up and walked away toward their own speeder.
Dex scanned the area to see if anyone looked suspicious. He recognized that a man skirting the crowd outside the cordon and moving away had a guilty aura about him. Dex nonchalantly made his way towards the man's direction, and told his cam droid to go higher than normal to get a holopic of everyone on the scene, especially the guilty guy. The droid climbed higher and snapped the pic. The guy ducked down an alley and disappeared. Dex dashed towards the alley and looked for any sign of where the man went, but there was no sign of the man anywhere. finding nothing left to find. Dex returned to the gathered crowd and started asking the crowd if anyone saw what happened.
A rodian with a slight build and wearing a sanitation suit said he'd seen the entire thing.
"How did they crash?"
The rodian got really excited. "They were flying towards the financial quarter when the speeder began whining. Flames appeared in the repulsors and it fell from the sky. It exploded right before it hit the ground." He used his hands to reenact the scene as he described it.
"Who all was in the speeder?"
"I couldn't see who was in the speeder. It was a custom job with screened windows," said the rodian as his hands crossed each other indicating just how much he could not see.
"was it just the pilot, or were there passengers?
The rodian crossed his hands again, "Like I said, I couldn't see anything."
"Who are you, what were you doing?"
"My name is Ween Tomu. I work at the sanitation plant and just finished my shift. I was walking home when I saw it happen. I recognized the speeder as being Barett Athaka Pell's and immediately reported the crash on the public comlink over there," he said as he pointed to a comstation on the side of the street. "The wreckage was still on fire, and the passenger section was completely destroyed, so I didn't approach it."
"Alright, thank you for the info. if you think of anything else let me know." Dex said as he handed Ween his data chip.
Liora went back at the speeder and used her datapad to check and see what was on the chip that the officer had dropped on the ground.
The chip showed that the officer was named Moza Moomo, and had a secure account number along with a small amount of info detailing what kind of credits were needed in order to ensure exclusive reports on certain inner workings of the SecForce.
Having read the information on the data pad, Liora removed the chip and dropped the chip into her secret pocket inside her vest.
At the speeder, Nei began decrypting the information she had retrieved from the speeder. "Nothing looked terribly out of place at the crash site," she relayed to her companions.
The data from the speeder's computer core had been damaged, and was incomplete. Nei could tell that the data would need to be analyzed by a fractal algorithm in order to be recreated. She had the equipment back at her lab, and the process would have to wait until she had a chance to get back there.
"Nei, can you run this guy through the system and find out who he is? i think he's involved somehow." Dex said as he showed Nei the guilty guy on his viewscreen.
"Certainly," Nei began to research. "There were two casualties: a Gran and a Cerean. The officer wouldn't identify the Cerean as Pell, but it's not an illogical jump. The bodies were taken to District 8011 Morgue 38"
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