After nearly botching the “Dublo” mission, Slyvannia, Vakim, Kohl and Gamaliel returned to Aparra Station with tech wiz Vancejin, who decided to help with the ongoing assignment.

The Aparra Team is now headed for Cloud City, where it will attempt to pull off a multifaceted strike that has the potential to net some major resources for the Alliance.

Every member will have a key role in this complex mission that could go a long way in the fight for freedom across the galaxy …

(For best effect, insert the above text into the Star Wars crawl.)

Van sat in the Yarith Bespin Hotel’s extravagant casino, wearing much nicer clothes than usual and sipping a more exotic drink than he typically preferred. But it was all part of the plan. This was the most luxurious hotel in Cloud City, and he needed to look a little bit like he belonged.

He was casing the casino ahead of the big sabacc tournament, discreetly scoping out the layout to see how he might put together his ruse to help Slyvannia and the Alliance win. The spacious casino was also a showroom, and a couple of large holoprojectors stood at either side of the stage. They gave Van an idea.

The game of sabacc involved cards that changed values randomly until they were put into an interference field in the middle of the table, where the values would be frozen. Van was pretty good with holograms, large and small, and figured he might be able to hack those holoprojectors, enabling him to project altered card values onto the playing table. The key was to find a way to get close enough to the holoprojectors to tinker with them without being questioned or suspected. He had an idea for that.

Kohl the Zabrak and Gamaliel the Wookiee had come ahead with Van to scout the venue and keep an eye out for their Imperial target, Baron Baffert Gisdale. He was the key to the whole operation. They were to kidnap him and have Slyvannia use her shapeshifting abilities to take his place both in the sabacc tournament and in the transfer of the valuable antiquities. Alliance operatives had reserved a room at the Yarith Bespin Hotel, making sure it was directly beneath the baron’s room. They also had a second room in a cheaper hotel, the Danbu, not far away.

Kohl and Gamaliel, unaware they stuck out like sore sabacc losers, were keeping an eye out for the baron’s arrival while considering ways to capture him. They had just come upon an interesting idea when Van called and told them he had finished scouting the casino and wanted to meet them in their Danbu room, where they were all staying that night.

Once they were together in the privacy of the room, Van said, “I need you guys to find me a work badge.”

“A what?” Kohl asked.

“An official work badge, from some kind of technician, if you can get one. It will help me fix the holoprojectors without being noticed.”

“Ah, OK,” Kohl said, shrugging to Gamaliel. “we’ll try to get one. We also have a thought about how to capture the baron. It will require some more holo-magic from you.”

Their idea was to try to rig the lift so it would drop the baron off on their floor rather than his and have him walk right into their suite. It would require a little holo-illusion from Van and some elevator tinkering, but they felt it could be done.

“We’ll take your droid to check it out late tonight,” Kohl told Van, who nodded as he worked a holoprogram on his datapad.

Later that night, Kohl and Gamaliel headed to the Yarith. Waiting until no one was around, they hopped in the elevator with Van’s little droid, R6-Z7. They stopped the lift between floors and plugged in Z7, who quickly found the controls and reprogrammed the floors to be one off the buttons. When the droid indicated it was done, Gamaliel hit the button for floor 43 — the baron’s floor. And the lift stopped at 42.

“Well, it works,” Kohl said with a satisfied smile as he had Z7 reprogram it correctly. “Now we just need the magic man to create a holoprogram that makes the hallway look like Floor 43.” Gamaliel shrugged agreement. All of this sneaky stuff was boring to him; his forte was explosives and sharpshooting, and he was hoping he would get to blow something up before this was all over.

As they were headed back to their room in the Hotel Danbu, Kohl and Gamaliel spotted a city maintenance worker walking by himself — his worker badge displayed prominently on his chest. The mercenaries both looked at each other and smiled.

Van was surprised when the room door slid open and a young city worker stumbled in, with Gamaliel and Kohl walking behind him.

“Who’s this?” Van asked.

The Wookiee warbled a response. “Your badge,” Kohl translated.

The young human was quaking in the shadow of the towering Wookiee. “P-p-p-please don’t hurt me. As I told these guys, I didn’t do anything, I don’t know anything, I don’t have anything.”

Van held up his hand as if to silence the quivering employee: “Don’t worry, kid, no one’s going to hurt you. Just hand me your badge and have a seat in the closet over there.”

The next morning, Slyvannia, Vakim and four Rebel commandos — dressed in casual clothes — flew into Cloud City on the Makado.

Vakim was amazed at this city in the clouds and took in the sights like a tourist, almost forgetting why he was there. The inside wasn’t as impressive as the outside, but it was incredibly pristine and he kept stopping to check out all of the alien sculptures that lined the indoor promenade. Sly had to reach back more than once to keep him moving toward the Yarith Hotel.

As they were finally checking in, Vakim heard a Mon Calamari voice nearby: “Vakim? Is that you?”

Vakim’s eyes rolled up on each side of his head. Bad luck to have someone recognize him now!

“It’s me, Kartoom!” the other Mon Cal said excitedly in Basic. “Remember, we went to school together? What have you been up to? I heard you joined the Rebel Alliance!”

Vakim cringed, wishing this guy had at least spoken to him in their own language. Laughing, he said, “Alliance? Haha, where did you hear that? Obviously some very bad information there. No Alliance here.”

“Oh,” Kartoom seemed a little dismayed by that correction, but he rambled on anyway. “So what have you been up to? Where have you been? What are you doing on Bespin?”

Vakim tried to hush him up and brush him off, finally agreeing to meet him for dinner to catch up on old times. After Vakim got rid of him, he rejoined Slyvannia, who rolled her own eyes at him. Vakim was chagrined. He was having a tough enough time adapting to a life of intrigue without getting called out by sycophants — he remembered that Kartoom character had always followed him around like a guppy, obviously impressed by Vakim’s noble status on Mon Cal. That seemed another life ago now though.

Slyvannia checked in with Kohl via a private comm channel, and they agreed to meet in the Yarith suite — though Kohl told Sly to send a commando to the other hotel to relieve them. She didn’t understand the request, but she later found out it was to keep guard on the kidnapped worker.

The group met in the Yarith suite, and the initial trio updated Vakim and Sly on their progress. Kohl had spotted the baron with his retinue, which apparently consisted of a consort, a personal valet and a security team of four dark-clad stormtroopers.

“We need to know the baron’s schedule so we can prepare the trap,” Kohl told the crew. “Or at least be able to track him once he leaves so we know when he is returning.”

“I can handle that,” Slyvannia said.

Slyvannia decided to scout out the baron’s suite by going downstairs to an outer terrace, turning into a rawwk — one of Bespin’s smaller flying creatures — and flying up to look in the window of the baron’s suite.

She saw the baron, the woman and the valet all sitting in the living area of the suite. She floated around for a bit, trying to hear the baron and watching his movements so she could replicate them later. Eventually, the baron and his mistress left with a pair of guards, leaving the assistant alone. Sly then floated back down to the terrace, returned to human form and headed back inside.

She didn’t see the baron leaving the hotel, so she decided to use his Man Friday to find out his schedule. She took the lift up to the baron’s floor, shapeshifted into a hotel employee and knocked on his door. The assistant, Shaw, answered.

She told Shaw that she had an urgent message for the baron that was coded for his eyes only. Shaw called to find out where the baron was having breakfast and told the Sly “messenger.”

The restaurant was not far from the hotel, and Slyvannia easily spied the baron and his female escort, Villaria. She watched the baron for a while, mentally recording his mannerisms and movements for her future mimicking. As the pair was leaving, the redheaded rebel slyly brushed by Villaria, attaching a tracking device.

Meanwhile, back at the Yarith, Van sent R6-Z7 up to scan the baron’s floor, copying the visual while pretending to be a security sweep droid (not that anyone would have fallen for a bucket-topped machine as a sleek security droid). Once Z7 returned, Van got to work on a holoprojection to complete the elevator ruse that Kohl and Gamaliel had concocted.

Gamaliel and Kohl grew bored just sitting around and decided to head to Cloud City’s lower levels, where the less reputable denizens hung out. They thought they might be able to track down some stun gas for their pending trap. They ended up with sleep gas and a mask, which they figured would have to do.

While they were doing that, Slyvannia and Vakim decided they should track the baron via Villaria. They kept a distance, Sly following the tracking data on her wristband. They ended up in the upper-class residential area, and Slyvannia talked her way into the secure inner neighborhood, with an escort from one of the city guards who fell prey to her considerable charms.

A huge blast door shielded a massive open-air terrace that supported over a dozen luxurious suites that rose four or five stories each. Sly casually strolled through the area, which included beautiful gardens around each suite. Keeping her eye on the tracker, she could tell the baron, Villaria and two stormtroopers had gone to meet someone in one of these luxury abodes. In fact, Baron Baffert was meeting Plaia, an antiquities seller, and finishing the purchase of the items the Aparra Team was supposed to confiscate before he left. Sly reported the baron’s location to the others and then headed back to grab Vakim and return to the suite and get ready to spring the trap.

After he had finished his holoprojection of the hallway for the trap, Van went to register for the sabacc tournament — the Rebels were planning to have a backup entry to Sly’s baron. Then he headed off to find his Talon Karrde connection, a guy named Mak who was a bartender at the Idiot’s Array Casino.

“Hey, Van, long time no see!” Mak said, happy to see a friendly face from his past. “What kind of tricks are you up to on Bespin?”

Van chuckled. Little did Mak know the tricks he was working on. But Van simply said, “Just passing through, Mak. Actually wondering if you are still in touch with Talon Karrde.”

Mak swept up a couple of empty glasses and shook his head. “Haven’t talked with him in months, since he was on Bespin with some of the gang.”

Van was afraid of that. “Well, if you hear from him, can you have him contact me?” The techie gave the bartender his interstellar comm code and then headed back to the suite.

When he got back, everyone was there — and Sly said the baron and his crew seemed to be coming back. So Van flipped on the hologram that made their floor look like the baron’s floor, and Z7 triggered the lift switch so the baron would unknowingly get off a floor early.

Surprisingly, it all worked to perfection. The baron and his crew indeed got off on the wrong floor, did not notice and walked right into the Rebels’ suite. Kohl set off the sleep gas canister, which knocked out all four, and Kohl and Gamaliel tied them all up. Vakim was amazed it had all worked to plan. Then he remembered he had done almost nothing to help set it up, leaving it to the experts, and he let out a sigh of mixed relief and disappointment.

The commandos donned the stormtrooper gear, and one of them took Villaria down to the med center. Van was unsure why they decided to do that, but it wasn’t his department so he didn’t ask.

Slyvannia shifted into a baron look-alike and went upstairs with one of the commandos dressed as one of the baron’s stormtroopers. Sly was mildly surprised to see two other troopers with Shaw in the suite; but, after telling Shaw that Villaria had fallen and was in the med unit, “the baron” dismissed the troopers, who all waited outside.

Slyvannia then shot Shaw with a truth dart and began to interrogate him. She found out that the baron was a big benefactor of the emperor and was planning to present one of his purchased Bespin antiquities as a gift. She also found out that Villaria was not a consort, but a professional assassin. And Shaw himself was a professional marksman.

Meanwhile, Kohl and Vakim used a truth dart on the baron and interrogated him, learning he was planning to leave the morning after the tournament with his antiquities.