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Easy to get lost in a place like this. That's the most that Bannie could offer him before sending him off here.
Polis 'Pol' Granth shook his head.
Understatement of the millennium.
Nar Shadaa was a multi-speeder pileup of cultures, species, and buildings. A cluttered crash site of a billion billion ships. The Smuggler's Moon was more like a Garbage-man's Heap. Disorganized, disorderly, and very very deadly to those who belonged to any organization that put an emphasis on those most tenuous of virtues: Justice.
He'd have to remind his sister to keep her, currently considerable, distance. Mesa was all the way off to some phantom planet called Tython--deep in the Core--to finish her training. At least, that's what she claimed in her most recent communique. A month ago. For all he knew, his uptight, bossy big sister was dead.
The thought didn't even make him wince. It wasn't that he didn't care about Mesa, it's just that he had lived with the expectation of her death so long that it didn't even merit attention. Jedi didn't live long in these days. Besides, it was a big galaxy. If he wanted to find someone else to boss him around, he could take up with the Hutts. Or just check back in with Headquarters, they always managed to have something exceedingly trite for him to handle.
Pol wrapped his synth-leather jacket tighter around himself, pulling his scarf up to shield his dark-skinned face as he walked past slot machines proclaiming their score multipliers and high win chances (nearly half a percent!) to anyone who spoke anything beside Basic; then past Sabaac tables and their players eying both each other and him shiftily; and finally into his destination. Nar Shadaa's current premier Pazaak Den: Maw Charter--(which was not to say that it was a nice Pazaak den. The game had taken rather a steep downturn in the last century). Pol smirked as he strode into the doors and flashed his Holo-ID at the bouncer. She didn't have to do much more than glance at his bleached hair and crew cut before a smile of recognition broke out on her face.
Salv knew him from many prior visits over the past month, but they kept up the ritual. Ritual was important on Nar Shadaa. A community can only depend so much on Luck before it becomes their god.
And it was a good thing Salv never looked too closely. Republic Intelligence had a bad habit of missing details on their fake IDs, and Pol had no intention of getting caught out with the wrong birthday.
"You look tired today, Ves," said Salv, as she input the passcode to let him in. "Rough night?"
"Oh, you know," Pol winked at her. "Someone kept me up late."
Salv laughed and opened the door, hurrying back to her post. Pol's good natured smile vanished as soon as she was out of sight. He walked into the first available room, where the opening rounds of tonight's tourney were already starting. He produced a new smile for the organizer, who was waiting patiently at the front desk with a self-assured smirk on his face.
Hopper was an Omwati, one of the few that had ventured this far from their homeworld. The feathered avian humanoids were given to numbers, and Hopper was no exception. His mind was as sharp as the pointed feathers on his head, and it was for this reason that he'd earned Pol's special attention.
And the attention of the SIS.
The plan was, ultimately, simple. Because directly hiring Hopper would likely result in a massive tizzy with the Hutt Clans, who had gone out of their way to secure him as an extremely capable accountant, Pol's job was to find a way to communicate a job offer to Hopper that he could accept without arousing their attention.
The methodology he chose just needed a bit of luck. Not the god, just good old fashioned luck. The kind his great-grandfather told him grew on trees on a planet called Ilum.
Pol fidgeted with the crystal strung around his wrist as Hopper finished entering him into the tournament. It was a deliberate action, he told himself. Meant to put others at ease with his own discomfort. The fact it also soothed him slightly was just a bonus. Mesa would tell him it's the Force. Pol hoped it wasn't. The Force really karked up the odds when it stuck its nose into your business.
"Your starting betting pool is 2.517 million Republic Credits," Hopper explained. "You will be allowed one buy-back if you are eliminated during the first round. Progression is determined by remaining credits. Those who reach the final table will play for seventeen rounds, at the end of which, the winner will be determined by consensus, or by roulette."
"Roulette?" asked Pol, slipping deeper into his cover. He put a trill of fear into the question, and no small amount of hesitation. "Like..." he leaned close enough to put his hand on the desk, palm landing atop a set of electrum plated dice, and whispered to Hopper. "Like Ruusan Roulette?"
Hopper chortled good-naturedly, then leaned in to whisper back. "Not at all. A simple, final gamble. A roll of the dice, with the total deciding the winner. Pure chance."
"Pure chance." Pol repeated, he lifted his palm from the desk, then winced. The false electrum plating of his substituted dice was slightly duller, but if Hopper noticed, he didn't say anything.
Pol pocketed the real dice, headed off to his first game, and began a generational run of bad luck.
* * *
Two hours and seven rounds of tournament later, Pol had already used his buy-back, and was now enmeshed in a final duel over the scraps of the loser's bracket. His opponent, a smarmy, clever man named Rand, had only lost his own game because of cheating. Unfortunately, cheating was perfectly allowed at the Maw Charter, so Rand was seated across from Pol, who--doubly unfortunately--needed to win this match in order to make his plan work.
Pol adjusted his pants slightly, reseating the cup that had long since started to chafe, then glanced at the bracket on the wall, and carefully checked his own stats as he drew another card.
2 wins-4 losses. 456,212 credits remaining. Pol glanced over at the organizer's table, and saw that Hopper had also noticed the pattern. Good. Half his job was already done.
Rand, however, was sitting at five wins and just one loss, and Pol needed him to have two. Aggravatingly, he needed himself to have five losses, so he'd have to go into round eight and carefully arrange for that match to be a loss. And--checking his credit total again--it would have to be a very narrow loss indeed.
It was this or finally getting an implant, Pol, he reminded himself. And then what do you have over Shan?
Rivalry aside, he wasn't much a fan of cybernetics. People and droids were very different things, they should stay that way. He didn't think he'd even get a prosthetic hand if ever he needed one.
Rand surprised him--and knocked Pol free of his musings--by overdrawing in the first round, and busting at a total of twenty seven. Pol, galvanized, made the exact same mistake, but he had a hand card in reserve that brought him back into a winning position. With two wins out of three for this match, Pol went into the final set with a plus-six, a minus-two, and a plus-minus-one card. If he could get his total anywhere in the neighborhood of twenty, and ensure Rand didn't, he'd be in a very good spot indeed.
Grimacing, the very first card Pol drew was the only card in the deck that he couldn't deal with using his hand cards. A plus-fifteen, the maximum possible in a Maw style deck. Drawing anything above a seven would be a guaranteed loss. The odds of that, with the cards already laid out now? About one in three.
Someone cleared their throat loudly. Pol looked up at Rand, who was grinning.
"Problem, Ves?" asked Rand, using Pol's cover name.
"I didn't realize there was a play-clock," Pol shot back.
"Oh, I'm in no rush," Rand said, voice low.
It was at this point that Pol performed what some might call a foul in professional shockball, but was fairly common practice at a Pazaak booth. Rand should have shin guards if he was going to table-talk. Glaring daggers at Pol, Rand scowled even harder as Pol drew another card.
What were the odds?
A plus-one. Standing at sixteen was ill-advised, especially if Rand's hand cards were any good. And, he reminded himself, he did still need to win. But the score was dead even, one wrong move and he'd throw the match.
And although he was quite exceptional at throwing matches...
Pol drew another card.
A plus-five. Total twenty-one. Bust. For a moment, his heart plummeted all the way to Nar Shadaa's diseased core, but then he glanced again at his hand cards. With a triumphant whoop, he played his plus-minus one, bringing his total to a flat twenty.
"Pure Pazaak," Pol said.
Rand glared even harder. He raised his hand and called for the bouncer.
"Check him for a skifter," he told Salv. The bouncer grimaced.
"He doesn't cheat, Mr. Rand," Salv said. At Rand's insistence, though, she patted Pol down.
Pol, meanwhile, was cursing in several dozen languages. He knew he should've dumped the dice! But... electrum plated anything was worth quite a bit, and SIS salary didn't stretch very far.
Salv patted down his jacket pockets, then frowned. She reached in and pulled out his hold-out blaster.
"I hope you weren't planning to use this," she said.
Pol, shrugging, let his right hand slip into his pocket, and he palmed the dice just as Salv put back his blaster. "It was just in case."
"In case of what?" Rand asked bitterly.
"In case someone got mad that I won," Pol snarked.
"You're not winning this tourney," Rand laughed. "You've got all the game knowledge of an Emdee!"
"And yet I beat you," Pol reminded him, as Salv stepped back and shrugged at Rand.
"It's like I said, Mr. Rand. Ves doesn't cheat. It's why he hardly ever wins."
Rand clenched his fists and ground his teeth, but he handed over the bet for the match and stalked over to his next game. Luckily enough--and unluckily for Pol--this was a triple-elimination bracket, so Rand would have a single other chance to make it to the champ's table.
* * *
Rand made it to the champ's table. All the way to the end of the seventeen rounds, and managed to arrange for himself to be Pol's only remaining opponent at the table.
So naturally, Pol was rather unenthused when Hopper approached holding the dice that he'd so carefully reweighed.
"Evens for Mr. Ves, Odds for Mr. Rand," Hopper rattled the dice in his feathery hands, and rolled them out onto the table.
Blanching, Pol gripped the crystal on his opposite wrist. He was meant to be odds! He'd set the dice up to roll evens to ensure a loss, and now he was going to win! For a moment, his mind flashed forward to the future: He was going to be drummed out of the SIS. Theron Shan and his stupid, perfect teeth were going to smirk that nerf-herding smirk and hand him a box to pack his desk with!
Pol rather thought he'd prefer to be shot.
The first die spun to a stop. A four.
The other tumbled end over end, as though with a life of its own, and stopped.
Pol stared at it, hardly daring to believe. But yes. That singular demarcation was correct. The other die had landed a one.
He had lost. Against all odds.
Thank the Force.
* * *
"--that you used an Onderonian key cipher to communicate our offer to this man. How in the name of the Force did you know it would work?"
"I wasn't entirely certain, sir." Pol smiled at the director of Republic Intelligence and lied through his teeth. "But I knew it was a safer idea to use my losses as the cipher key than my wins, and with my total credits spelling out 'offer' in the numerical music language of the Omwati... I like to think I gave him enough breadcrumbs to approach us. From there, it was just a matter of ensuring the dead drop coordinates were embedded in the false dice I left in his care."
"And lucky enough he checked them," said the director, nodding behind their desk. "Now that we have a new numerical expert on the payroll. I'll be glad to get Shan back out into the field."
No. No karking way.
"That's what he was doing? Desk jockeying!?" Pol almost shouted.
The director smirked at him. "What's wrong? Surely you'll be glad to have the support of Intelligence's best agent back."
Pol reddened, he had assumed that Theron was in deep cover somewhere, keeping busy and very far away from him. He opened his mouth hotly to say as much, but clamped his jaw before he added something that might get him fired. "Of course. I'm very glad to have helped The Republic. Are you quite sure that Theron isn't still needed on Coruscant, though?"
"Of course I'm sure. In fact... our next mission for you is going to require some support--it comes from a rather auspicious Jedi Master, and who better than Theron to give you a leg up, eh? Now, tell me what you've heard about some fellow named Vivicar..."