Captain Typho's Blog: Nothing like a snowstorm

Where: Moenia, Naboo.

Feeling: Cold.

Listening to: Jardena

Continued from here.

I glanced thoughtfully at the strawberries, the cream and the honey that we hadn’t touched yet from breakfast. I couldn’t let that go to waste, right? I slowly looked her up and down. “A plan is forming even as we speak,” I promised with a grin.

It was a relief when Jardena broke down and bought some cold weather gear since that meant that I could get some too without looking like I was overreacting to the dip in temperature. Hey, 60 degrees is cold to me, so I was freezing.

The surveillance of Bibble, which could’ve been tedious, was made bearable and at times actually fun by the fact that Jardena and I were working together and were in synch for the first time in a long time. Whether we learned anything useful about the target was debatable, however.

The first day Bibble didn’t leave the grounds of the retreat at all. Some Gungan construction crews were doing extensive digging at the site so we couldn’t get as close as we would’ve liked. On the second day Bibble made a brief trip into town, had lunch with the mayor in a public restaurant, then went back to the retreat. On the third day two significant things happened. The first was that late in the afternoon Bibble abruptly dropped off of the map while in the main house, only to reappear hours later, still within the grounds.

“What was that all about?” I remarked. “I thought the tracking powder had been discovered or had worn off, but it’s looking like that’s not the case. There’s some seriously heavy shielding somewhere in that structure. The Chancellor sure wants to ensure his privacy.”

Another blip suddenly reappeared on the very periphery of Jardena’s map.

“Well look who’s back,” I said, pointing. It was Dormé’s signal. It was stationary at the moment.

“How much time do we have left before the powder wears off and we lose both signals?” I asked. My breath made little smoke trails in the frosty air. I casually stuck my hands back in my pockets.

Jardena handed me a thin pair of thermoregulating gloves. “It can last up to 3 weeks, but after 9 standard days, the signal starts fading. I wonder why Dormé is back?” she said.

“I bet she got tired of waiting and whined for him to come up there or she’d do something drastic,” I said disparagingly.

Dormé’s blip remained stationary. After about 30 minutes going back and forth on the grounds, Bibble’s blip moved towards the speeder bay. “He must have been packing,” Jardena remarked. Moments later, Bibble’s speeder exited the grounds, heading in the direction of Dormé’s blip.

Jardena looked at me. “Time for us to get moving. Would you like to drive or would you like to navigate?”

“You can drive,” I offered as we went for our speeder.

We passed through the outskirts of Moenia, and then the suburbs. The houses became few and far in between as we put distance between ourselves and civilization. Jardena gave me a run down of the area where Dormé was entrenched as I studied the map display. As we entered the hill country it began to get overcast. Frowning, I overlaid a weather map on the tracking map.

“Hmm, I’d thought they’d stop to get some supplies,” Jardena said.

“She’s probably been stocking up,” I said, “which is a good thing for them, because they’re going to get snowed in.” I pointed out the weather front moving into the area. Of course, if the happy couple were going to get snowed in, so were we. Snow doesn’t discriminate.

“On the way out, we can chat with the people who run the stores, figure out what they saw and heard from Dormé,” Jardena said.

I nodded, but said, “We do need that information, but I wonder if it’s safe for us to question people?” Dormé could’ve taken the simple precaution of asking people to alert her if anyone came around asking questions. And because of that stupid reality show, we couldn’t easily go anywhere on our own home planet. I was beginning to seriously regret having appeared on that show.

On the way up here we’d passed at least half a dozen lodges that had been almost completely reclaimed by the environment. The abandoned structures had a stark skeletal appearance. Why did Dormé want to “nest” out here anyway? Then it occurred to me that the creepiness was precisely why she may have chosen this place.

For my own benefit I brought up another overlay, this one showing nearby life forms. Nothing larger than a vir vur registered, though an hour or two ago I thought I saw a wild gualama. I took my eyes off the map and surveyed the desolate terrain of the hill country ahead of us.

“Nothing like a snowstorm to make this more challenging,” I remarked. The rented speeder was an off-road vehicle. We’d almost certainly be putting its capabilities to the test.

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.