The Things You See

"Nothing like a snow storm to make this more challenging," Dante remarked, looking unhappy about the snow situation. "Well, it will help us with our cover, most likely hide our tracks, and since they'll be forced to stay inside with each other, it might prompt all sorts of interesting conversations. So it could be a good thing, at least in regards to information collection. And I did pick out the best cold weather clothing they had, which is pretty good, especially for civilian wear." I hoped that might cheer him up some.

"Oh, trust me, I do appreciate the winter gear," he said, pulling his hat down around his ears. "Let's hope they do use the snowstorm as an opportunity to talk. They may use it to do something else that neither of us wants to see them doing,"

The speeder happily made the change from gravel road to dirt road to what I would loosely describe as a trail. While I was familiar with the hunting lands, this particular area was not one I'd been to all that often. As kids, my brothers and I had been told ghost stories about spooky things happening in this part of the lands. The broken down old houses just added to the ambiance. I decided not to mention that to Dante, he's still a bit jumpy about the woods.

The dots stopped moving where we thought they would. They were about 10 km ahead of us. I looked at Dante, "how close do you want to go in with the vehicle? I'd prefer we get it as close as possible, but leave it on the trail so we have an easier time getting out when we need to leave."

"We're going to have to get a little closer, I think. This distance would be fine ordinarily, but if we need to quickly sprint 10km in inclement weather to get to this speeder, it might as well be parked 100km away," he said.

"Yeah, and 10 km dash in snow shoes no less. I was thinking of getting as close as possible. But that's something I always get dinged for in performance reviews and after mission briefings. I figured I'd ask what your SOPs were."

I managed to park the speeder several hundred meters from our surveillance point. After a some scrounging, we'd found enough foliage to camouflage the vehicle from anyone flying over or passing by on the trail. For the first day, I'd just planed we could sleep in the speeder, it was big enough.

We walked a crescent perimeter of the place, setting up small recording devices and cameras. This took some time, the cabin owner had maintained a open space between the house and the woods. I wanted to determine what if any devices were on the cabin before I got more ambitious and placed anything on the building.

I will admit that it struck me as just a bit hypocritical that I was placing spy equipment all over the property of what could be two people who just wanted some romantic time together. But Padmé was convinced that they were trying to kill her, that they might try to kill her security staff. It warranted investigation.

I returned to our observation point and dropped down next to Dante. "Well, here we go." I smiled and nodded a bit to myself, then looked at him, "So my primary desire of this mission is get info either confirming or denying what Padmé told us. A bonus would be specific intel about when where and who. And my best case scenario is that who ever is in charge might give the good gov'nor a call." I had a very pleased smile on my face. I did this a lot on mission, have several goals. My troopers and I would compare our different goals with each other. It's always fun to hear what the others thought the best case scenario would be.

"That would be an amazing stroke of good luck," he said. "In addition to finding evidence for or against what Padmé claimed," Dante said, "on a purely personal level, I've got two things I'd like to know. First, I'd like to know if she really is pregnant or not."

"Do you think that she's not pregnant?" I asked, surprised. The thought hadn't occurred to me. "Why fake it? Other than to get you in trouble. And Bibble is playing along pretty well if she's not pregnant." I rubbed my back, thinking of that fake belly I'd worn. "It's not the most fun thing to pretend to be."

He sighed. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. Bibble would know if she's not pregnant, even if he can't go to obstetrician visits with her."
"Second, what is her connection to those people who supposedly kidnapped her a few months ago? If that was faked – and it had to have been – what were they really trying to do?” "Thinking back on Dormé's 'kidnapping,'" he commented, "if the plan had been to lure me somewhere and kill me, it almost worked. If that's what it was all about, it was a good plan. It's almost funny, but if my father hadn't been there that day, they would've succeeded."

"I wonder… how far back I need to go when questioning Dormé's actions," he said.

I merely arched an eye brow when he mentioned his father. "Did the locals ever do a follow up on the two men? Figure out where they were from? I'd hate to think someone has been trying to kill you for that long." I frowned, this whole mission was very personal, though it had nothing to do directly with me; it was just that some people wanted to off my former queen and the guy I was dating.

"The investigation is ongoing," he mumbled, leaving it at that. There was something else, Dante's face indicated that his mind was else where. I wanted to ask, but I figured if I needed to know, he'd tell me. There had already been enough awkward moments on this trip.

I looked up at the sky. The clouds were starting to become a bit more dense. Guessing from experience, we had at least 12 more hours of on site surveillance, depending on how much snow moved in to the area. I knew I'd have to keep an eye on Dante, I was worried he might not tell me when he got too cold. The equipment should keep things fairly comfortable, but in the dark at night, things got very cold and equipment could fail. But I wanted to stay as long as possible, the initial intel from the small spy droid I'd released indicated that the building did have a communication set up that had impressive range, not standard equipment for a remote cabin.

As Dante made a face and looked away, I continued surveillance, watching all the readouts on my HUD glasses. I let the image behind the information pouring in become blurry and indistinct. I'd seen worse, my unit and I had to spy on Hutts once, nasty. But I also couldn't resist the urge to tease Dante just a bit. "Well, you do have to give Bibble some credit, at his age, who'd have guessed he was still that spry and flexible." Yeah, I was making stuff up, but I was trying to lighten the mood. I did hope it wouldn't take to long.

TBC

read Cpt Typho's POV here