Nocturius: We got a couple nice and cool women in Republic Commando. Unfortunately, we don't have much official art about them.
What we know about her tho, is that she is very conventionally attractive, tall, blonde with blue eyes. I assume she is white because naturally blonde with blue eyes tend to be associate with light skin from a biological POV, but I'm aware it's not a rule. I saw other nice interpretations online.
Besany is one of my favorite character in RC. I rooted for her a lot in the hospital chapter and wish her the best on Mandalore.
Finally got around to draw more! Additionally, never tried the "justdrawitonpaper" style. It terrifies me how easy it always would have been.
The two women on the right are besany and Jilka. I was just in the mood to draw them into something spy-like! (also I accidentally messed up Jilkas face :()
+ Jusik and Ordo, I always had imagined Jusik having this one really long Padawan braid constantly slapping Ordo in the face
Etain and Niner! Woho. Their faces is me reading the (amazing) analysis by @thesummerstorms btw. Man Etain didn't deserve any of this shit.
hey listen im sad we didn’t get more of besany coming into her own as a mandalorian so i’m here to right this wrong
as someone who is on the receiving end of a lot of guys who think im cute and apparently have no other thoughts about me, i sympathize with my girl. u can bet she’d find solace is the genderless nature of beskar, and probably buzzes all her hair right off. it’s hard to fit in a helmet, you know. ordo loves it.
besany ‘pulled a blaster on medical personnel to protect fi’ skirata is gonna get into her fair share of fistfights. possibly get some rad face scars. definitely a lot of stories, and a lot of respect
i wanna give her a strill puppy? LET HER HAVE A STRILL PUPPY....
she has hundreds of brothers-in-law now and u can bet shes gonna be the best big sister ever
All those years of running black ops, and they found out who she was through office gossip. They couldn’t even to do it themselves; Besany had to ask around for them, because not many people talked to clones unless they had to. Jaing is pretty sure Ordo wants his gett’se in a vise for putting her at further risk. It’s not as if he didn’t know he fucked up; he let that shabuir Ellik get to him. He’d gotten angry at being called clone, and it had made him kriffing stupid.
He’d offered Ellik a program that was supposed to detect more spy applications on the Treasury systems, and the spook had jumped at the chance. It wouldn’t, of course; it’d hide all of his other intrusions while giving her a false sense of security. Mereel had congratulated him on the way out. In bitter retrospect, Jaing had handed over an attack vector and proof of attribution on one compromising datachip.
His program failed to appear on the Treasury networks. Some of his existing data crawlers were increasingly slow; others stopped reporting in altogether. Shortly after he’d started investigating why, someone had dropped a file onto his command and control management server containing a proof of concept exploit against the crawlers. His exfiltrated data started encrypting itself with an asymmetric key he’d never seen before, but that was naggingly familiar anyway. Ordo had not quite turned purple at the news.
Yesterday Besany had comm’d Ordo in the middle of her shift. She had a name. Turned out that the information technology division had given a copy to the Republic Signals Directorate in a show of sense - or covering their shebs. It didn’t matter which; it had come into the possession of someone who’d known what they were looking at. Mereel had started researching immediately. Jaing didn’t bother offering to help; he was in disgrace, running forensic tests against the shabla remains of his c2 servers while Ordo glowered at him. An hour later Mereel had surfaced, announced they had the right person, made himself an entire pot of shig, and disappeared. Until now.
Mereel came out of his room, yawned, and tossed him a dossier of flimsi. Presumably it had the normal things in it; employee file, traffic tickets, holonet activity, but Jaing didn’t get any further than the first page.
“She’s kriffing blind?” he asked, blankly. Her photo stared back at him from the flimsi; a young Mirialan woman with a headcowl, a serious face, and a cheap prosthetic eye in each socket.
“Congratulations, Jan’ika,” Mereel said, self-satisfied in spite of his exhaustion. “Popped, scoped, and dropped by a blind woman.”
“Fierfek. What in nine hells.”
“I want to deal her in,” said Mereel abruptly. Add another person to the conspiracy? Maybe. This way they wouldn’t have to snuff her because he’d been an reckless di’kut.
“Why?”
“Read it and you’ll see.”
He read. Thjuyera Ral wasn’t her original name. The change was understandable; her biological parents were alive, well off, and in good health, but she’d been in the Mirialan foster system before she could walk. As she got older, she had begun to cycle between foster care, occupational therapy camps, and juvenile detention centers.
“Kaminii don’t have a monopoly on osik parenting,” said Mereel, reading his face accurately.
After she aged out of foster care, her juvenile records had been sealed under a clean slate program; she’d gotten a degree with first class honours, and had stayed out of trouble with the law. She’d still had to get a waiver granted to be admitted to her clearance level, signed off by names Jaing recognised as being far above even his CO’s pay grade. Whatever she’d gotten up to must’ve been interesting. Jaing checked, but Mereel hadn’t been able to get copies of her records.
“She didn’t stop. She got better,” Jaing said, flicking back to the beginning. Blind.
“She got kandosii,” said Mereel. “Turns out those camps were notorious for incubating baby slicers.”
“The camps?” There were some articles in the dossier about how they’d taught underprivileged children to be career criminals.
“Hotbeds of suspicious holonet activity,” said Mereel. “Rumours have it the Whistlers recruited from there.” Jaing raised his eyebrows. That crew was legendary.
“What she’s doing in the RSD then?”
“That’s a very good question, and one I would like to ask your Ms Ral. She’s got to be bored shitless with those stuffed suits.”
“She’s not my anything. If she made a shabla mess of my c2 for fun I’ll snuff her myself.”
“No, you won’t,” said Mereel. “At least not until she tells you how she did it. I want to know why she didn’t turn us in.”
“If Signals knew, the spooks would be all over us,” Jaing said, thinking it through. “Zey, too.”
“Which means your intrepid Ms Ral acted on her own recognisance. I think she likes you.”
“Usen’ye. Fuck off.” She had attribution for Lt. Jaing, and could infer the involvement of Lt. Mereel from their actions in the Treasury control room. From them, it was only a small leap to Besany. If anything happened to her, Ordo wouldn’t put his gett’se in a vise, he’d rip them right off. “Why do you want to deal her in?”
“We can’t be here all the time to look after our own interests. She’s sneaky and can keep her mouth shut. Opsec’s half the game.”
“Sounds like it’s you that likes her.”
“A smart woman with flexible morals? Of course I do,” said Mereel, spiking his guns. “Sorry, ner vod, but you won’t have a chance against my charms.”
Ordo came back after visiting Besany, looking far more relaxed. By then, Mereel was shovelling food into his face, and Jaing was still infuriatingly stumped. If Ordo didn’t give the okay he was going to have to black-bag her himself so he could find out.
Between mouthfuls of cold leftovers, Mereel talked Ordo around. It was an easier sell than Jaing had expected. Ordo wanted to protect Besany, but he also wanted a life with her. The most plausible way for him to get one was buried in the data they’d exfiltrated from Tipoca City. If they brought in another slicer it would let Mereel focus on the changes to the Fett genome. They could always take care of her later if she became a problem.
“Besides, I’d rather not snuff someone for being smarter than Jaing,” said Mereel, tipping backwards in his chair. “Who knows where I’d have to stop?”
“Fuck off.”
“Snatch and grab,” said Ordo, and greenlit the op. “Take a couple of the others. They’re getting restless.”
“Jaing, too, of course, ” said Mereel, tipping further. “It’s going to be so romantic.” He fluttered his eyelashes. Jaing picked up the closest thing and threw it at Mereel’s head, which at least made his di’kut brother fall over backwards on the floor
“If she’s this good,” he said, ignoring Mereel’s antics, “she might have thought ahead and made a dead man’s switch.” He’d be disappointed if she didn’t have at least one contingency plan.
“A civvie? No,” said Ordo, flatly.
“It’s possible,” said Mereel, lying flat on his back. “Her opsec is as tight as a jetii’s virgin asshole. Wouldn’t put it past her to have a fail-deadly.”
“Duress code, too,” said Jaing, flipping through the dossier. It was remarkable for what wasn’t in it; no parking tickets, no social media accounts, no speeder license. Her holonet graph was tiny. It seemed unlikely Ms Ral didn’t use the holonet. She just used it very carefully.
“You really think?”
“I do. I’ll stake on it, Mer’ika.” Keeping that small a profile for years took effort and planning. Chances were she hadn’t half-assed her insurance either. Which made her messing with his setup even more confusing.
“You’re on.”
"I'm in," said Ordo. "Civvies don't have switches." Jaing suspected he was too attached to the idea of Besany being the only competent employee the Republic had ever had to judge properly.
Thjuerya Ral left the RSD the next day at her usual time, just another pedestrian on the busy Coruscant streets. Unremarkable except for her eyes, traditional Mirialan dress swaying as she walked. Their unmarked cargo speeder pulled up just behind her. Fi dropped the bag over her head, and Sev helped him throw her in the back. Too easy. Too kriffing complicated.
Mereel rushes into the room, hair bouncing. He grabs Ordo by the shoulders. "Ord'ika," he says, "I have a surprise for you."
"oh no."
"belly dancing classes! Eight of them! FREE."
(lmao y'all know this ain't gonna work)
So Ordo refuses, of course, and Mereel is deeply wounded that his brother wouldn't join him in this once-or-maybe-twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "It could be for you and Besany."
"No."
Besany seizes the opportunity. "I'll join you, Mereel. It sounds like it would be fun."
"Besany please don't encourage him--"
They take the classes and they're the best students.
