Interrogation

The storm was crashing all around us as we tried to get to the council. I spotted a decent path as quickly as I could, my sharp eyes detecting a portion of the storm that would be slightly easier for Jern to fly through. Jern had almost made it when we took a nasty hit from a lightning bolt. With the accumulated damage from the torpedo that hit us earlier the light jumpmaster wasn't faring well. “Arron! put out the fire!” Jern yelled as sparks flew all around. Arron made some manual repairs and we managed to land in one piece.

We got out and headed toward the prefab council building. There was a guard at the door, “There's a meeting in progress, you can't come in.” “We've worked with the council before, I'm here to take Ojibs place in the council while he's sick. we have urgent news that we need to discuss immediately!” Varad was commanding enough that the guard let us through and we entered the meeting just in time to hear Advisor Tirano announce that all SoFA members were under warrant of arrest.

There were a lot of people at the meeting notably including Dah’lia and most surprisingly, a member of the Rebel Alliance from corellia. The guards asked us for our weapons and we were forced to comply. Varad tried to tell the council about the ECC destroying the coral, but with Djinn Monka sick, and the sudden warrant for arrest we weren’t in a good position to make any claims against them.

The next thing I knew we were rushed away to confinement, separated from each other. While we waited to be interrogated we were told that we could make one call to somebody before the interrogation and with Djinn Monka sick and no one else to call I decided to talk with Vuni, because he had been showing me his bantha when the terrorists rocketed the fuel ship. The council had evidence from a video that they found anonymously that they used to incriminate me as being a terrorist, although the evidence wasn’t very strong.

The guard that was with me was from the Rangers so I didn’t have to worry about him much. I called Vuni and saw that he was in the jungle riding Jelly, his bantha. “I’m not here.” Vuni said as his com went on. “I can see you.” I replied.

“Is that you Vreck?”

“Yes, it’s me, what are you doing in the jungle?”

“Dah’lia told me to hide in the jungle with Adi, because there's bad people looking for her. She’s been giving me sandwiches.”

“Wait, she's been giving you sandwiches? I thought you were giving her sandwiches?”

“Yeah, I think it’s in return for when I gave her sandwiches on the ship.”

Adi peeked her head into view of the camera, “Hi uncle Vreck!”

“Hi Adi, how is it going?” I asked.

“We’re going on a camping trip!”

“That sounds like fun!” I replied, and she hopped off the bantha and disappeared from the hologram.

“So Vuni, you remember Market day right? When you got Jelly.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Do you remember seeing anyone with a recording what I was doing?”

Vuni paused a bit to think, “Yeah, there was someone. It was a blue guy with red eyes. He had a video recorder.”

“Was there anyone else?”

“Now that you mention it, there was another person. There was an ithorian who was recording as well.” With the description Vuni gave I knew that it had to be Zing-Zing the eco-terrorist.

“Well, stay safe Vuni, and keep Adi safe too.”

I wrapped up the conversation telling Vuni about some tasty edible fruit that he could find and was ready this time of year. Then, I got ready for the interrogation.

Ja'taa, the head of security, stepped into the room, she asked me a few questions about what happened at Market day and I told the truth, as I didn’t do anything criminal and had nothing to hide, although it is a sore subject as I failed to fully stop the selonian from blowing up the fuel ship.

I tried to deflect all the questions about the bounty hunter part of the incident, saying that I wasn’t with the others at the time so I didn’t know much of what happened. Then surprisingly, Ja’taa pulled out a vial of the acid Varad had named Fulsgold, she asked me if I knew what it was, what it could be used for and if SoFA had access to it, I told her that I knew what it was but I hadn’t studied it to see if it had any special qualities, other than being an acid. I said that we did have access to it since it was in the ruins on our property, but, I also said that the ECC probably had access to it as they had been in other ruins and they were also found in ours. She then said that she was done and left the room.

The next day we were all called to the meeting room. “All charges against SoFA have been called off, there will be no need for a trial. The trandoshan has been arrested, you are free to go.” We were all completely stunned by the announcement, except for Varad. “Although you will all have to do a month of community service for the ship you stole.”

I guess Varad took care of things judging from him being the only one unsurprised. How he managed to pull enough strings to completely cancel the charges I don’t know. (Although I don’t know how much the others did, from what Jern told us it seemed like he helped.)

Now, other than a month of community service we seem to be cleared from the bounty hunter fiasco which is a relief. Now we can leave that behind us and look into whatever that submarine was doing and try to stop the ECC from harvesting coral.