Moving aside as a man in pilots gear headed past him for the exit, Tarn bumped into someone just out of his field of vision, and heard the distinct clatter of a cup and the splash of liquid. He closed his eyes and silently cursed himself, then turned to apologise, coming face-to-chest with the patron he'd collided with.
"You owe me a drink, little man". Tarn looked up, into the angry eyes of another human. He stank of alcohol and sweat, and Tarn politely resisted the urge to cover his own face as the mans rancid breath washed over him.
"Accidents happen. Suggest you accept my apology and forget about it" Tarn said, his voice hoarse. He wasn't intimidated by the size of the other man, having been a head shorter than his peers for most of his life. But he didn't want to start something that would draw attention to him; unfortunately, his pride refused to allow him to simply pay the man and move along quietly.
"Yer little kark-wit..." the drunk snarled, grabbing Tarn by the collar and hoisting him from his feet. Tarn grabbed the mans wrists to relieve some of the pressure from his neck, and at the same time, a six-inch blade shot out from beneath his sleeve, the tip barely stopping short of the drunkard's throat.
"Put 'im down, Varos, an' get yer behind outta my cantina. Yer wife'll be waitin' an' I don't fancy explainin' to her why yer home late an' beaten up... again" the barman chided, scrubbing at a dirty glass with a washcloth, his lazy eye looking off into the distance while his good eye fixed the big man with a truly threatening glare.

Varos dropped Tarn back to his feet, and Tarn quickly concealed the blade in his hidden gauntlet. He'd kept them on as a precaution, the rest of his armour laying in his back-pack, tightly squashed in with his carbine. His side-arms, also concealed inside his jacket, would provide enough protection should things go south, but he doubted it would come to that. He wasn't on Socorro to start a fight, but to hopefully make himself part of something bigger.
"Usen'ye, di'kut" he muttered, as Varos made his way recklessly to the entrance, batting aside the other drinkers like they were little more than an irritating swarm of Chiru.
"An' you..." the barman snapped at Tarn, "shouldn' go startin' trouble. Not from round 'ere, are yer?"
"Neither are you, judging by that accent" Tarn shot back. "Ale. Nothing too strong, I'm riding". He slipped a few credit chips onto the bar, more than the ale was worth.
"Hmfph" the barman muttered, and set about fixing his drink. Tarn lost himself for a moment in the hazy image playing on the monitor behind the bar, a swoop race at the Agrilat Swamp on Corellia.
"Oi, yer change" the barman growled, snapping Tarn's attention away from the race. The barman was holding out his change, but Tarn shook his head, closed the barman's fingers over the credit chips, and sipped at his drink. It tasted foul, and it probably showed in his expression.
"Keep it. Tell me, friend, who's a guy gotta talk to, to find a man around here?" he asked, propping his elbows on the bar. He kept his voice low, but not conspicuous like the idiots in the holo's.
"Depends what yer lookin' for, business or..." the barman trailed off, his face twisting into something resembling a Hutt preparing to puke.
"I'm thinking dreadlocks" Tarn replied. "Purely business, of course".
"Dreadlocked guy over there, one armed fella" the barman said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of a man with dreads and a cybernetic arm. "Toth, I think's his name is".

Tarn nodded, and after the barman had ambled away and resumed his glass cleaning, tore himself from the swoop race on the monitor and headed toward Toth. Edging into the booth, he slipped off his backpack, and set it down on the floor with a thud, the contents clattering with a distinct metal-on-metal sound.
"You're a hard man to find, Alastair Toth" he said, sitting opposite the man on a still-warm seat - someone had been here recently - and extending a hand. The gloves he wore, fingerless and grey, were covered in dust. Realising the lack of courtesy in his gesture, Tarn removed the gloves, revealing strange symbolic tattoo's on his hands and knuckles; one, a stylised silhouette of a bird of some sort, apparently in mid-dive, was tattooed across the top of his left hand, the 'wings' and 'head' extending down his forefinger, ring finger, and middle finger, respectively. He fixed Toth with a piercing stare, his green eyes carrying a heavy weight for someone so young, and held out his hand again for a handshake.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Tarn Kane, and I'm interested in helping you out".

"I doubt it," Toth said to him, "You bring the Empire here, it's going to clean house. Like you said, no one wants that." Thesh was right though; Toth presented himself as a smuggler, but it wasn't a part that came easily to him. He was something of an outsider on Socorro, despite the fact that he had been born here and raised among smugglers and pirates. His father, Laszlo Toth, had been a respected figure on Socorro in the decades before the Clone Wars. But the war changed everything for Alastair. Having been raised in a culture that despised authority, Alastair had been caught up in the anti-Republic sentiments of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. His father, however, and most smugglers had supported the Republic—they knew that an untameable bureaucracy like the Old Republic was, in fact, good for business; it meant more corruption, more bribes, more goods moved quietly through customs. "We live in the shadows," his father had told him, "And the Republic casts a long one." Not to mention that they wouldn't stand a chance with the Trade Federation running things.

Alastair had decried his father's cynicism and left Socorro to join the Confederacy as a pilot. He came back a few years later, having lost the war and his arm, but not his idealism (bruised though it was). Laszlo Toth, meanwhile, saw what the Republic had become and didn't like it. He made peace with his son, but was then shot and killed by one of his own lieutenants, a man not unlike Thesh, who suspected that Laszlo's newfound conscience would be bad for business. And it was, too. Alastair had won the ensuing power struggle for control of his father's organization, but the organization had only diminished since then. Now, all that remained were his father's old warehouses, ships, and just enough people to pilot them—people whose loyalty to Alastair was, by now, assured. This, of course, helped him to maintain a level of discretion as he worked to turn the organization into the Socorran resistance.

Not everyone was pleased with this, however, as Thesh had made abundantly clear. The Weequay was also right that with each broadcast of The Mighty Monnok, the Empire would trace the signal closer and closer to Neftali, the other planet in the system. It was indeed only a matter of time. Toth didn't want to bring the Empire down on his home, of course, but fighting the Empire had made him do a lot of things he didn't want to do. Still, he hadn't yet decided if he would move the Monnok somewhere else, or prepare an ambush for Imperial forces when they eventually came to shut it down. But Thesh wasn't about to make the decision for him. "Maybe you should be more concerned about the Tammuz Sector," Toth said, "I hear the Empire is eyeing Chuzalla like it's the next Roon."

As for Kane, he had already proven himself good in a fight. Discreet, too. Still, Toth would need to know more about him before he would welcome him into the organization. Imperial informants were everywhere, after all. There was nothing that implicated Toth or his people in the resistance—or at least, since Fane was shot down, nothing that he knew of—and he preferred to keep it that way.

He allowed Toth to say his piece, refraining from interrupting, though he thought he could see where Toth was going with his speech; he wanted the Weequay's allegiance, or at least a part of it. He'd been thinking the same thing himself, that the Weequay would make a more useful ally than enemy.
"The Imp's are crackin' down on pirate activity lately, and its just gonna get worse" he finally said, breaking eye contact with the Herglic to address the Weequay. "Used to run with a few of 'em, doing small time raids, just enough to keep things moving. 'Til the Empire got wind of it, that is" he recounted.
It was true, he had done a few jobs, with a band of Weequay pirates and guns-for-hire, almost a year ago. They'd hit small Imperial supply depots, nothing too extreme, just enough to keep their operation going. For Tarn Kane, it had meant he'd made enough credits to buy information on the whereabouts of his enslaved mother, though that hadn't proved very fruitful.

It then dawned on him who the Weeqay was; Thesh, a pirate famous for his temper, and supposedly the liberator of a Tartan-class cruiser from the Empire.
"Think the question is, Thesh... if you're so willing to put yourself in the Empire's crosshairs before you have to, are you gonna shoot first or watch as they pick apart everything you live for?"

Kay followed Dar to the Tavern, though she wasn't saying much, if anything at all. Instead she was looking around, carefully, just observing the new and unfamiliar place. Once inside, she caught Darwin's glance and followed his gaze to the man that the bartender pointed at.

"Yeah." She muttered as she sat up onto a stool next to him. "Did I mention that I am really not sure about all of this, Dar? Something just doesn't seem right." Kay whispered to him. Then again, it could have just been the environment making her uncomfortable. Along with the reason they were there.

The lazy voice of Lim Hejin floated from across the bar, where he and his primary crew sat in a rather large booth, sipping ales and appearing rather comfy, at least for a group of pirates and smugglers. Hejin was known in his own circles; he'd heard of Thesh, of course, few pirates hadn't. Hejin was rather amused by the angry sentient though. For Hejin, running things for Njon the Hutt was a primary job; piracy a secondary, and Hejin's ship was more than fast enough and well-armed enough to do the job.

"So why don't we all settle down; I'll buy a round of drinks and we can all relax. Sounds good."

It was a small distinction, but an important one. Toth had never been comfortable being subordinate to the corporate bureaucrats and genocidal generals in charge of the Confederacy, especially when it became apparent later in the war that his father had been right about them—they were villains. He never fought for them, he fought with them. He fought for the Separatist cause, hiring himself to the Confederacy as a mercenary. "Big difference," some might say, "You still did what you were told and fought alongside them." Toth didn't have an answer for this, but it was still important to him and his pride that he had never been a member of the Confederacy or under the command of its leaders.

He tensed; the question, as innocently as it had been posed, could still have serious ramifications even this long after the Clone Wars. Though Toth answered it with an air of finality, he sensed the newcomer would drag the subject in a direction that the Commander would find uncomfortable, and in silence, Kane slid a finger up the cuff of his jacket and manually activated his hidden gauntlet blaster, as a precaution. It was times like this he missed his helmet, for the concealement factor among other things.
"Lot of people fought for and with the Seps during the Clone Wars. Nowadays, a lot more wish they had" he interjected, giving the newcomer a cursory glance. It wasn't a betrayal of his own feelings; he'd had the chace to fight for the CIS along with the Death Watch, but ultimately he'd chosen to support his mother and father, and their extended family of Clone soldiers. Despite his youth at the time, once he'd made that decision, he'd stuck to it.
Thinking of his mother brought on a pang of hurt, something he tried his best to conceal from his face. He'd been doing that a lot lately, and his refusal to let his emotions show was starting to affect his mind. He was no longer sure if he fought the Empire to find his mother, or if he fought them just to feel something.

"This conversation is getting awfully crowded" he muttered to Toth, a hint that he didn't trust the newcomer. Why, he didn't know, but he just had a bad feeling about him.

In fact, she still was unsure why he had wanted her to come along. It was very likely that she could have stayed on the ship, but she was sure that there was a reason for everything. The men were talking quietly enough that she couldn't hear, nor was she sure that she wanted to hear them. Backup. Yes. That had to have been what she was there for. Her shooting skills, while not the greatest, could possibly come in handy.

She turned her attention back to the bar and the little (untouched, aside from the umbrella) drink in front of her. Between her fingers she twirled the handle of the umbrella as she watched the paper spin in front of her and waited.