Chapter 8: Heist

Summary: Izuku discovers that empaths are good gamblers and a heist is pulled for his second act of galactic vigilantism. This time on a much more prominent target...

Chapter 8: Heist

Izuku was currently experiencing an extremely odd mental seesaw, where his societal moral compass was at war with his reality. And the really frustrating part was that said moral dilemma wasn't over the sort of things he probably should be agonizing over. He had killed at least a couple of people since arriving in this galaxy. Aayla's slave owner for certain and most likely at least a few of the guards at the Spice Merchant's operation he'd burned down. Certainly, he'd had to work through a bit of mental anguish immediately after that. But, the truth was, he'd been forced to kill during the Humarise and Meta Liberation War disasters back home. He'd already gone through therapy, and knew how to deal with the guilt, so long as it wasn't innocent lives he was taking.

Then, too, the situation with Aayla was complex. He was technically holding her as his slave. Not to mention the intimate moments that had occurred. Yes, thus far every one of them had been initiated by Aayla. But their theoretical power imbalance, combined with her missing memories, ought to make him uncomfortable with what had occurred there. Yet, his mental/emotional link to Aayla helped him understand her and be understood by her. He was aware that she was aware any perceived power imbalance was nonsense. She could tell him 'no' at any time, or even walk away, and he'd do everything in his power to aid her, not hinder her. And she knew it. She also didn't seem to regret their intimacy, even if he'd caught hints of something in her slowly recovering memories leaving her with a bit of unexplained conflict over the topic. That conflict seemed to be less about actually regretting the intimacy, and more about thinking she should regret it and that 'should' not at all matching up with her current view of reality. Confusing, but manageable for Izuku's moral compass so far.

No, it wasn't something big and momentous that was causing Izuku issues. It was, in fact, the fact that he was sort of cheating at cards. And raking in a lot of money in the process. Apparently, even a novice at the game of sabacc could utterly clean house when they were an empath. Not that he was truly cleaning house. Luck and superior skill on various players' parts over the last few days had resulted in a seesaw of money that prevented any outside observer from cluing into the fact that he was 'cheating.' Even so, their supply of credits had multiplied by a factor of five so far, and his current higher-stakes game was looking to double even that.

The pure hell of it, the part that was causing him to mentally skitter and seesaw, was that it was apparently actually a non-issue, legally. When he'd brought up his concerns about it after his first day of 'gathering information' around the gaming tables, he'd been surprised when Aayla stared at him…then collapsed into giggles. When she'd finally stopped laughing, she'd pointed out something that was obvious in hindsight. Izuku had an advantage with his empathy only because he looked like a baseline human. There were thousands of species in the Republic. Many of whom had some manner of enhanced senses. Hearing that could tell a lie from the difference in heartbeat, or a sense of smell that could do the same from pheromone changes. A near-human species called the Echani that could read body language to such a degree that few aside from other Echani could lie to them, even by omission. Not to mention several dozen species that were Empaths, Telepaths, or possessed innated abilities like psychometry. This wasn't news. This was a known risk of gambling in a multi-species setting, and most professional gamblers knew tricks to prevent such things from working. It was only because no one realized Izuku was an empath that it was giving him an advantage at all.

It made sense, logically. But as he sat there working the table and its various somewhat shady players for information, the whole thing was at war with the instincts of someone whose society had drilled into them that using Quirks like this was bad. On the plus side, his internal conflict apparently made him look rather grumpy, helping to reinforce his own supposedly shady origins as he fished for certain types of information. He could have simply dove into a bunch of the human minds aboard The Wheel and pulled that information out. But he didn't like doing that. On Gargon, he'd originally intended only to do it with one or two people, after he'd already identified them as criminals who he could justify violating the privacy of in pursuit of stopping criminal behavior. It was a slippery slope, one he'd been forced to sit through mandatory and extensive ethics training about both when his Quirk first emerged. Then again through an even more complex set of ethics and law courses when he'd become a Hero Student.

That original intention had been diverted by the outside influence of the power he now suspected was The Force. Said power had guided him to exactly the people he needed, shortening the process of winnowing those people out massively. And, technically, he could have done the same here. Two things had stopped him. The first was his awareness that it was a slippery slope and he currently didn't have the support network to call him out on over-use of it if he starting to slide down said slope. The second was more practical, in that he'd quickly discovered that alien minds were hard to work with. Even Aayla, whose species was classified as 'near-human,' was a bit disconcerting to try and read. Truly alien species, like the Rodian currently playing across from him, were something like stepping into an MC Escher or Salvador Dali painting. He could still get some information, sort of, but trying to navigate their minds beyond surface thoughts was disorienting and migraine-inducing. Honestly, he was lucky that emotions were simpler and considerably closer to universal.

Regardless of having been forced back onto more traditional information gathering methods, he'd still been making progress. Enough so, in fact, that he thought he could finally set his moral seesawing aside and start on actual operations soon. Particularly since Aayla's own efforts on the topic of the Jebble Box trade had already produced a date and location. One that was still a good four days out. Since they didn't know how that little project was going to go, not even sure what they were going to do other than be in placed to observe the transaction, they'd decided to run any vigilante work Izuku wanted to do before that encounter. And, in the Rodian that he was busy cleaning out the credits of, Izuku was quite sure he'd found his target…

... ...

"Alright. So we have a start and end time for the maintenance cycle on the air ducts. What about the cameras? Did the maintenance terminal give you any trouble?"

Aayla snorted and shook her head, giving him an airy wave and grin as she responded.

"Of course not. There's always a backdoor somewhere in those systems, made by the workers themselves. The security office would have been harder, possibly impossible if our guess about station security running on a droid brain is right. But a terminal for maintenance workers? It was easy. I can trigger the camera switchover to start any time I want."

Izuku nodded in satisfaction, as the last piece of their plan was accounted for. Since, unlike Gargon, they weren't intending to immediately flee The Wheel, this job had called for far more than a brazed smash-n-grab operation. Something made all the more important by the fact that the individual they were targeting was far higher up the proverbial food chain. At least potentially, what they were after this time could do a lot more good than simply burning down a single spice factory. But the escalation of targeting a Republic Senator was…considerable. Still, the opportunity had presented itself, and the subject matter was one that called to Izuku.

Senator Ask Aak of Malastare was effectively in charge of a planet of slavers and slaves. The fate of the Dug species wasn't as blatant or eye-catching as that of Twi'leks like Aayla. But there was actually a higher proportion of their population actively enslaved in some fashion. By a lot, in fact. The Gran Species had invaded Malastare almost a thousand years ago. Due to the Dug not being represented in the Senate and the Gran having a powerful position there, no one had so much as lifted a finger to help the natives when it happened. Indeed, the Republic had sided with the Gran, ultimately helping them establish the Gran Protectorate over the planet they'd outright invaded. The Dug had remained effectively second-class citizens on their own homeworld, and subject to Gran rule, ever since. A bit of digging had produced even more sickening more information. Any Dug that couldn't find enough work to pay their aggressively high taxes, ended up 'indentured' to pay off their debt by working in Malastare's mines. It was highly dangerous work, which very few of those so 'indentured' ever managed to escape.

It also wasn't something Izuku could fix. What he could do was ruin the highly corrupt, highly influential Gran senator that represented the Protectorate. Well, theoretically, at least. Ask Aak was known to be anti-Jedi. So, sending a datapacket with proof of his taking out some very illegal bounties on his political enemies to said Jedi would probably do the trick. Aayla, despite her still iffy memories, seemed to believe it would, at any rate. And the key to finding the data they needed had been the Rodian Izuku had been gambling with two days previously. Speaking of which…

"Our little gift for my former gambling buddy is ready? And you're sure it won't be traceable?"

Aayla rolled her eyes at that.

"On The Wheel? Not a chance in hell it can be traced, particularly since I used a new anonymous account and paid into it with random chips you won from a dozen different games. Given enough time, security might be able to make the connections. But why would they care to do so? He's not one of their boss's people, and they certainly don't get paid to poke into shady dealings. The opposite, actually."

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. He'd known that, of course. But he couldn't help but be nervous about this. It was only his second act of Vigilantism, at least in this new galaxy, and this one felt far more like a criminal heist than the first had. The spice refinery had felt more like a raid on a drug lab. This one involved breaking and entering, after making sure their target was gone. The Rodian they were targeting was one of the middlemen that Ask Aak used to relay those illegal bounties, and the sentient in question had let something important slip. It had taken several drinks and a little headache-inducing mental nudging, but Izuku had learned that the middleman was paranoid enough to keep records of every meeting and transaction with the Senator. He'd done so, quite smartly really, as blackmail to defend himself with if said Senator ever thought he needed to remove the data trail between him and his shadier business.

Despite his nerves, they really had gone over everything, and the plan was solid. Now, all they needed to do was wait for the maintenance cycle to start in a few hours…

... ...

Izuku was desperately trying not to hum the theme from Mission Impossible 17 as he shimmed his way through air vents. He'd been amazed to learn that air vents in space stations like this really were big enough to climb through, Hollywood style. Apparently, the amount of air that needed to circulate meant that they were required to be somewhat large, if only just barely enough so for him to squeeze through. He pointed the pen-light he was holding with his telekinesis at the junction he'd just come to, and very quietly spoke into his com.

"Okay, I'm at…junction 177-B39. Which way from here?"

Aayla's voice came back almost immediately, clear but quiet. The shielding on the air ducts should have scrambled any signal she could have sent…but they'd tapped into the maintenance hardlines and he'd left a set of relays at each such hardline junction. They'd be noticed eventually, of course, but not until long after they were gone from the station.

"That's the closest junction. Take a left and move 3.8 meters along the duct."

Izuku was quick to obey, knowing the window of the completely routine maintenance cycle they were using to pull this off would be ending soon. It had been another piece of information Izuku had picked up, from a much lower stakes dice game with locals, instead of across a sabacc table. The Force had nudged him toward the game when he'd tentatively reached out for information. Once again, the nudge had proven accurate, as he'd been all-but-forced to listen to the maintenance worker whine about pulling duty overseeing the droids that did the routine air-duct cleaning.

Careful, casual questions had given him the time it would be happening, and a little leg work had solved the rest. Aayla had rewritten the orders for the droids at the same time she'd sliced the relatively low-security maintenance terminal that the man would be using to watch over the droids. The terminal would show the completely boring cleaning of an entirely different set of ducts on the other side of the station, even as the droids simply…sat around and did nothing in a part of the vents well away from Izuku. With any luck, it would be a full month until what they were about to do would be noticed. Certainly, it would be at least several days unless something went badly wrong.

"Okay, I'm in position. Am I clear?"

"Yes. He hasn't returned to his quarters. Looks like the 'bonus' he got from the Senator unexpectedly is keeping him busy at the sabacc tables. As expected."

Izuku nodded. That had been a little bit of a gamble, of course, but a fairly safe one. The Rodian was both a bit of a gambling addict and quite a decent player. Logically, the 10,000 credit 'bonus' they'd arrange to appear 'from the Senator' would likely draw him to the tables and keep him there for hours, at least. Hell, he might even come out the richer for it, since he actually was pretty decent at sabacc. That was a bit grating…but Izuku was after a bigger fish. The Rodian was a no-one. One of tens of thousands of replaceable middlemen. Leaving him in place was essential to the Senator never realizing anything was wrong. Not until it was too late, at least.

With confirmation that the man wasn't present, Izuku went to work on the next step. The step that would normally alert station security. Except that, what would alert them to someone cutting into the ducts, was the change in airflow. And air wasn't currently flowing through these ducts because of the maintenance cycle, something which had forced Izuku to bring his own oxygen. So long as he patched it properly, it wouldn't be noticed until the next maintenance cycle. Which would be weeks away, at least. Very, very carefully, he concentrated on his telekinesis. Condensing a flowing line of air into a high-pressure cutter. Not something he could do practically in combat, the trick had been developed for infiltration and escape, which is exactly how he used it now. Truly, having had an underground hero as his UA instructor was coming in much handier than he'd ever expected it to.

The compressed air sliced through the relatively thin alloy of the air duct easily, cutting Izuku a beveled square large enough to move through. He worked as quickly as he could, setting the sharp chunk of metal aside with a telekinetic hold and starting the same process on the thicker durasteel of the Rodian's apartment ceiling. That took longer, almost too long. Izuku slipped through, replacing both chunks of metal and using a clear sealant to resecure them, just moments before air started flowing again to the section.

Breathing a sigh of relief twice over, both for the near miss on the timing and the fact that he hadn't triggered any alarms on entry to the man's quarters, Izuku took a long look over the room. Honestly, it wasn't anything special. It just looked like some random work-from-home office setup, combined with a few alien pieces of art and some posters of naked Rodian's Izuku immediately tried to unsee. Mostly because they were male Rodians. Apparently, this particular fellow bats for the home team. That wasn't any sort of mark against the man in and of itself, of course…but Izuku could really have gone his whole life without knowing what a Rodian dick looked like and been perfectly happy.

Banishing that thought, Izuku ignored the terminal in the room, already having managed to get a mental image from his target of where the blackmail information was. Doing so had only been possible since it had come to the alien man's surface thoughts, which had been only mildly migraine inducing to process, when he'd slurred out a few details he really shouldn't have. With a satisfied sigh, he quickly found the false panel at the bottom of a desk drawer and removed the data chips hidden there. He replaced them with several blanks, hoping that doing so would prevent the theft from being noticed a little longer. A moment later, after double-checking that he'd disturbed nothing else, he boldly walked out the front door. Alarms generally only went off when you broke in to somewhere, not simply left in a normal fashion…and Aayla had already sliced the only security camera pointed at the door.

With that, his second act of Vigilantism was over save the message delivery. Frankly, Izuku was a little bit disappointed he didn't get to light anything on fire this time…