21 Chapter 21

As he looked at 7 figure numbers in his accounts Renato couldn't help but feel that he had made a good decision in having HK trail behind the suppliers as well.

Turns out the "supplies" the gang were receiving were spice racks. To say he was expecting it to be spice would be an understatement.

He figured that the "supplies" were either spice, forbidden technology or in the worst-case human trafficking. If it had been human trafficking though, Renato didn't think he would leave them for the cops and instead would have chosen to directly slaughter them, luckily for the both of them it was not so.

As planned before, HK went tailing after the suppliers whereas Renato tailed the gang. The gang was apparently smart enough to keep the merchandise separate from their usual place of dwelling as they entered a particularly rich neighbourhood. 

There they stopped at a house and then proceeded to park the car with the merchandise in the house. Renato slowly infiltrated the house only stopping at places from where he could have Paddy help him by adding him to the house defence whitelist. He used the scanners in his helmet to get a wireframe model of the house.

A quick comparison with the outside of the house and the interior made it apparent that the room which was supposed to be directly below the bedroom was walled out from the inside and there was no entrance for it from the outside.

Which meant that the only way to enter the room would be through the bedroom directly above it through a secret door. Sure enough, as he got closer to the bedroom he could hear the sounds of what was supposedly the gang leader.

"Be careful! If even a tiny bit spills, I will make you guys regret living."

"Well, it won't be much different considering we already regret living."

"Don't be a smartass Yatorn!"

From there Renato found a place to hide on the ledge of the bedroom so he climbed onto the ledge by free climbing the house. One thing that made hiding easier was that the bedroom was directed towards the small forest in the community so he didn't have to worry about being exposed due to a random passerby.

It took them roughly one hour more to finish loading up the spice into the hidden room, they then went into the room collectively leaving the room and house to be guarded by only 2 members who then locked the room door. After waiting for a while seeing that there was no one else except the guards in the room, Renato slowly peeked into the room to see the two were already playing sabacc. 

Seeing this Renato got an idea, he took one of the gas grenades filled with sleeping gas. Due to the fact that the hidden room didn't have proper ventilation, he decided to gas the chamber and knock them out.

Renato took one of his sleeping gas grenades and threw it into the room after pulling the pin and closing the window.

"Hey! Who's out there!? Kriff, I am feeling kinda sleeeee–Bzzzzzzt!"

"Kriff! Get up you bastard we have to throw the grenade awaaay-Bzzzt!"

Renato watched time passing by on his chronometer. At exactly 3 minutes mark he put on his helmet and turned on the gas filter and opened the window. Immediately the slightly yellow gas slowly dispersed into the atmosphere, and Renato jumped in. 

He waited to hear any noise from the trap door leading to the hidden room but on verifying that there was no noise he climbed down the ladder to the room. In the room, he saw the gang leader knocked out sitting on a desk, and in front of him was a complete assembly line operation with weighing scales and packaging along with the spice. 

While it was impressive the amount of professionalism a street gang had, it probably reinforced the stereotype that Mon Calamari were always meticulous in everything they do. He searched the room if it had any more secrets but he couldn't find any.

So Renato did the next best thing, stripping the guys of all their valuables. First, he took away any and all weapons, then he took any valuables like ornaments, etc then checked their devices to see if any of them had unprotected bank accounts or had done dumb shit like storing the password in the notes app.

One thing that Renato did while stripping the guys was use psychometry on the items to check if the items had any important emotional significance to the guys. While he didn't have too much sympathy for drug pushers, he didn't want to take away something which could be significant like a dead family member's item.

While using psychometry he also got to know some of the darker things that some of the thugs did. For those kinds of thugs, he made sure to give them a thorough beating using his anatomic knowledge to make it so that there would be lasting consequences.

For the final act, Renato used psychometry on the boss to see where he had hidden all of his drug money and found that the money was hidden in this house itself. It was in a vault behind a fake wall behind the dishwasher in the kitchen. 

Honestly, it was kinda genius of him, because who would ever make a dishwasher movable? it was a fixed appliance that people didn't check much and with the quality standards of the mon calamari. It didn't need to be replaced frequently. Even in the event that the cops raided the place they probably wouldn't find it. 

Renato quickly got down to the kitchen and moved the dishwasher to find a tablet inside with a data chip on a keychain behind a fake wall. Renato took them and checked the datapad, obviously, the data chip was the account key. He checked the amount and it was roughly 300k credits. 

Renato quickly transferred the money to one of the accounts from which he will further route the money through several accounts to make the money untrackable. By the time he had done with the money transfer, he was reaching the safe time for the knockout gas effects wearing off.. 

He couldn't be sure of the knockout time for the knockout gas as different species had different systems for toxins, so Renato gave himself a general average time limit based on most species. Renato quietly slipped out of the house just in time for HK to contact him.

"Contentment: I have cleared all the meatbag suppliers, master. I even found 500k credits. It was truly joyous to slaughter meatbags in such an open combat, I seem to have chosen the correct master.

Hopeful: You should send more tasks such as these masters, we wouldn't want your meatbag to be exhausted. You should leave future tasks to a superior droid such as me."

"Sigh, Glad at least one of us is enjoying the trip here in HK. For now, let us regroup back at the market. I will buy the underwater suit before we go diving."

"Disgust: Underwater warfare! One of my least favourite battlefields, however, any chance to kill meatbags should not be passed up."

"Yeah whatever you say HK"

After a short trip to the market to buy the suit, HK and Renato returned to the spaceship. Now that he had the suit, Renato started working towards integrating its capabilities with the ODST suit he currently had on him.

It took him only 2 days to design, finalise and combine the two suits with the help of the huragoks. While he could have done it faster if he left it to the huragoks as paddy reminded him, he would get too lazy if he did so, hence the delay.

"HK, My suit is ready, It is time for some underwater exploration!"

"Statement: Wonderful, I was getting tired of waiting for the auxiliaries you need for your meatbag to function underwater."

At this point, Renato was learning to tune out HK's ramblings. Since the time he had started his search for the Ultima pearls, the force was constantly pulling his attention underwater, now that he had the suit he decided to follow the force's will. As he kept sinking, Renato at first thought the force would direct him towards some of the criminals in one of Dac's cities, however, it quickly became apparent that that wasn't the case.

"Paddy, check where I am heading and see if you can find any information to help me."

"Already on it, after searching through the local holonet, it appears that you are headed towards an abandoned city. The city was abandoned when it was destroyed in the last Quarren - Mon Calamari war. It previously hosted a Quarren military garrison."

"Hmm, looks like we will have to be on the lookout for any automated defences still working, wait for a second, I feel some sentient minds as well. Looks like your wish came through HK, we may end up fighting with them seeing how thick the negative emotions are in this area."

"Joyous: Wonderful, I have not been given a chance to practise my underwater skills for a long time. 

Regretful: if only master was not a meatbag I could have used sonic weapons to destroy them from their insides"

The idea sent up a chill along Renato's spine. Searching through the area, his fears ended up being unwarranted as they didn't come across any automated defences, monitoring technology or even any other live technology at all. There weren't even any guards patrolling outside. It looked exactly like paddy described an abandoned city. But the distinct negative emotions he was feeling from a part of the city said otherwise. 

Eventually, Renato and HK reached a domed area where he was hearing screams through the force asking him to go inside and save what was inside. Renato was a little surprised, this was the first time that he had such a huge reaction from the force which meant that he was probably dealing with a victim that was force sensitive.

"HK be careful there might be force sensitives in there. The victim is definitely force-sensitive. I don't know if there is a force-sensitive in the hostiles but be ready to use force user countermeasures. Paddy, start-up combat mode, turn off the external speakers until after combat and connect with HK and use data from him to improve combat mapping."

"Informative: I don't differentiate between meatbags masters. All meatbags are the same to me regardless of their fancy powers." HK replied as if the very idea that he differentiated in how he killed meatbags was abhorrent.

"Combat systems are online, establishing a link with droid HK-47 complete," Paddy replied to his earlier instructions 

"You know you can just say it normally and don't have to respond so robotically?"

"Please focus and maintain some professionalism, young master."

With everything ready, Renato and HK took positions on both sides of the room and Renato gave the signal to breach to HK who was the vanguard for the attack. As soon as the room was breached, HK threw in a flash grenade. However since he had a link with HK he already knew the course of action and turned on anti-flash bang protection. A quick look into the room showed that they were faced with 12, no, 14 Quarrens who immediately sprung into alertness due to the sudden noise from the breach. 

Unfortunately for them, they were too relaxed until now not expecting anyone to find their hideout, and at least 6 Quarrens didn't have weapons on them along with them instinctively looking towards the direction of the flash-bang they were momentarily incapacitated. On Renato's visor, he could see what HK was targeting so he avoided them and instead targeted the Quarrens that were about to reach for a gun. 

The specifically prepared beam blaster shots for underwater fighting went through one of the Quarren's biceps and then through his heart because of his bending. Another Quarren shot by Renato died with a hole in his throat. The last two Quarren heads were lined up in a straight line allowing him to kill both of them in a single shot that went through both of their skulls and hands that they used to instinctively protect their eyes.

The remaining Quarrens instead swam behind cover to be safe, and Renato also followed their move and jetted to move behind a sofa. He checked the situation and locations of the remaining Quarrens and noticed that they were already down to 5 members. HK had taken down 5 Quarrens in the time it took him to take down 4 which in Renato's opinion was not bad for his first combat with blasters.