Episode 3.07, Chapter 13: The Desert Menace Report

  I should have seen this coming, but really, how could I have known?   Port Etmar has been under semi-regular assault for the past few weeks. It's from two fronts: the Bloodsmith Raiders and the various warlords on Chalcedon. The latter turned up because with the Hutts and Black Sun no longer keeping an iron grip on Chalcedon, the warlords felt any previous 'agreements' were off.   I'm sure has all sorts of deeper meaning but right now, it means they feel free attack the Free Traders moving goods overland or in low orbit and take whatever they find. It's causing one frak of a mess.   Aside from that, with the Jedi, Vor, and the others on world, I kept up with what their status was given at least half jumped into combating the problems here. The help is really welcome. There's only a handful of us from the Roughnecks here and we're just advising.   So, I set up trace watchers in the city system for their comm system IDs in case they needed support. That was one frak of a trick. Port Etmar's city network is old and busted. Most is offline. I half suspect if I turned most of it back on, it has embedded sniffers in there that will wake up and start auto-reporting back to a Hutt or Black Sun outpost. Nope, don't need that trouble today... but it may have happened anyway. But I'm getting ahead of myself.   Commander Vanya, Captain Kolene, and Reese left the site of the aborted attack to the east of New Etmar district to look for Goss. He and Rico were with a training group in the north just outside of Port Etmar. I had no idea where So'zen or Vance were, but I was already actively tracking a lot at that moment. My best guess was Vance was in the capital building and So'zen was off looking around town.   Hicks? We'll, we knew he was on world. We just wanted to leave him alone because he wanted to try having a vacation like a baseline. A real human. Not a clone. We thought it was a good idea at the time.   But, then the situtation went all sideways.   Attacks and ambushes hit from different directions. Nothing seemed related. Which, to me, meant they had to be. Almon D'Joy. Former Director Illyan, warned me about him. That D'Joy had undergone both the regular Mentat training and the Tleilaxu Biodyne version. I saw the pattern but not quite fast enough to warn the others.   Bloodsmith Raiders hit from the south, drawing off the local air support. One of the warlords, Din-Chrav Rhal I think, brought down a water tanker a moment later. At the same time, a grenade went off in the capital building. That last, I found out later, was a smoke screen to cover an assassination attempt on Chancellor Kanter.