Personal log, Zatti.
No time for whiskey. Agent Flamingo got in touch to give us our orders. We only had one day before the arrival of the royal party, and we needed to be ready. Queen Stefani was going to attack her own citizens, then disappear. We had to make that happen.
We came up with a two-pronged approach, meaning that if one part went wrong we still had the other to fall back on.
Plan A was to drug the Queen. Voahk had spotted some tranq rifle darts for sale in one of the shops, and Wuzu was confident he could find out some kind of drug that would send her into a murderous rage. He went off to engage in some bribery and shopping, while Voahk went shopping, returning with the darts, but inexplicably without the tranq rifle to actually shoot them out of. Something about them being sold out.
With any attempt to insert drugged darts from close range liable to result in flat Noghris, we decided the best approach was to throw the darts from the water tower as the procession passed by. Clearly this would need practice. We got Voahk onto a suitably tall roof and he got to work. Naturally this attracted attention from the bread helmets. I was going to try to talk them into believing this was a completely harmless cultural practice, but before I got the chance, Voahk decided to talk to them. I quietly sloped off instead. They all showed up again later, so presumably they wriggled out of trouble somehow.
Plan B was to hack into the Queen's wheelchair, allowing us to control her remotely. The communications tower from where I broadcast those holovids seemed like the best place to send the hack from, as it would have high signal strength and good range, but I didn't particularly want to be there during the procession. So Aoghri and me tried to sneak in.
We proved significantly less sneaky than in the daytime, so it was quite a relief, rather than a hinderance, when the rest of the group showed up. The space port guard questioned us. Once again Voahk tried to explain himself, but I shoved him out of the way and apologised to the guard, explaining that my friends were all really stupid and I was just here to take them home.
He didn't buy it. Amazing, given the great efforts the team were making to sound like idiots, but fortunately Wuzu showed up at that point and distracted them.
"What do you mean? They can't speak."
He must have short circuited something in the guard's brain. I wasn't complaining. In fact, I was not speaking at all, while Gax made weird chattering noises.
With the guard now convinced that we were a group of brain damaged children on some kind of school trip, we were offered a tour, which Wuzu accepted. It was a very interesting tour, pointing out all kinds of exciting pieces of communication technology, which the others entirely failed to appreciate, but they did manage to cause enough of a distraction that I was able to get my remote hack installed while the guard was looking the other way.
With plans A and B both ready, there was just the small matter of getting Voahk onto the water tower without causing suspicion. I suggested bunting.
I have to admit, my team have hidden depths. Not only is Aoghri a superb artist, but it turns out Voahk has a real talent for making bunting. It was beautiful, with alternating images of bread helmets and hearts, and occasional slogans like 'We love Queen Stefani' and 'Down with Wanksy'.
The morning of the procession dawned and we got into position. I was in the shuttle, connected to the space port communications tower, with Wuzu for backup. Gax and Aoghri were positioned in the crowd, with Gax keeping an eye on the area of the water tower and Aoghri ready to follow the Queen if necessary. Voahk had his bunting and was ready to climb the water tower.
Guards showed up, wanting to know what he was doing. I'd made sure that he had the drugged dart concealed in the bunting. He handed them the other bundle of bunting to examine, and they were so impressed by his skilled depiction of their bread helmets that they bought his story and let him climb up and start decorating.
With much fanfare, the royal party arrived. Queen Stefani emerged from the ship, with her hair skillfully styled into the shape of a bicorn hat and her wheelchair gleaming. Her handmaids followed, each wearing a superbly crafted bicorn decorated with such detail that even over the remote link I was using, I think I could see the individual strands of hair.
I watched as the procession approached the water tower. The moment came for Voahk to throw the dart and...nothing. He missed! Even after all that practice! How in the name of Lord Vader did he miss?
I saw Gax bend down to pick something up off the ground and throw. And moments later Queen Stefani began frothing at the mouth.
It was really very impressive, all the things she could do with that wheelchair. As she fired rockets into the crowd, I began the hack to take control of it. Getting into the arms and primary weapon systems wasn't too hard, although disappointingly by the time I did she was all out of rockets.
Gax and Aoghri now had to dodge the derranged Queen as she activated her disruptor nipples and began firing blasts into the crowd. I was at work on the legs and secondary weapons, which proved to have a significantly more tangled architecture. All I could do to help at this point was to move the arms to cover the disruptors, incidentally making her look rather modest.
I was still wrestling for control when I realised she'd deployed yet another weapon. With Gax now facing down her crotch gun I moved an arm again to cover it, making her look even more modest. At least until she fired anyway, and shot her own arm off.
I was down to only one arm and no weapons at this point, but finally I managed to figure out what was going on with the legs and took full control. I steered her away from Gax, through the shanty town and out into the desert.
We gathered once more at the shuttle. It was time to get off this horrible little moon.
Gannis the slicer dropped by. He'd hacked the data tablet and pulled a bunch of interesting information about our home planet. He was also interested in changing ships.
Wuzu negotiated the sale. Gannis got the lambda shuttle we'd been using (with some recent repairs to the rear). We got a Firespray, and a pile of cash. We climbed aboard and took off, making only a brief stop in the desert to pick up what was left of Queen Stefani.
As we flew away we saw the lambda shuttle take off, and shortly afterwards, explode from a shot we didn't even see coming.
Having confirmed with Agent Flamingo that we had completed our mission successfully, we spaced Queen Stefani and had a decent look at the content of the data tablet. Which made me glad I still had that whiskey.
I had always believed that Lord Vader was working to restore the ecosystem of Honoghr, so that some day we could return home. On the tablet was evidence that Vader's restoration teams were really there to ensure the planet stayed poisoned, so that we would remain bound to his service.
And at that point, the strange cube that we'd picked up in Ford Harrison's office began talking to me. And what it said was one word.
Vengeance.
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