In Choree Kie's bar, "Kie to the City," Vash, Quinn and T-101 were drowning their sorrows over Boba Fett's double-cross and fortunes lost.  Quinn, particularly intoxicated, over-indulged as much in his lamentations as he did in his alcohol, telling Vash and T-101 about the Empire's strip-mining of his once noble homeworld Hydraulis, and how the planet is now nearly entirely devoid of its precious Hydrasian Alloy, the hardest metal known in the Galaxy.  As Choree Kie brought drinks to the table, he heard snippets of Quinn's prolonged lamentations, wondering with great trepidation what the Empire might be planning on doing with an entire planet's worth of this indomitable metal.  As Quinn fell unconscious at the table, two figures entered the cantina, backlit by the multi-colored lights of The Slips.  Though their features were not entirely visible in the back-light, the silhouette on the left was unmistakably that of a Wookiee wearing a single bandolier slung over his shoulder, a hip pouch on his hip, and a bowcaster slung over his back.  The second silhouette was clearly a human male wearing a flight vest, a Corellian bloodstripe on his trousers, and a gun belt slung low.  The Wookiee raised a hairy paw and pointed at Vash, Quinn and T-101's table.  As they neared and the door closed behind them, the figures' features became clear:  the mighty Chewbacca and...Lando Calrissian!  They approached the table and interrogated the conspirators about their recent heist with Boba Fett, inquiring about the whereabouts of Fett and his carbon-frozen cargo.  Though the conspirators were as in the dark about Fett's whereabouts as Calrissian and the Wookiee were, all made a mutual promise to pass on any information anyone acquired about Fett's whereabouts.  Lando delivered his contact information to Choree Kie, and departed with his hairy companion, followed moments later by a slight figure in Ubese armor who, judging by her passing glare as she left, was clearly present as back-up for the pair in case any trouble had gone down.

 

Meanwhile, at her Sable Dawn headquarters, Ismail received a holographic communique from Virec Xan, instructing her that Boba Fett must die for his double-cross.  Conveniently, Faago the kidsman had paid for a contract on Fett's life for stealing the proceeds of the heist and for stealing Seana, the Hydrasian waif he had "liberated" from the slave auction.  Xan informed Ismail, however, that Faago's murder contract was just a cover; that Xan was sending Ismail to personally carry out this assassination as a member of the GenoHaradan, the shadowy  assassins' organization they both belonged to, because "possessing a Jedi army shifts the balance of power in the Galaxy."  Vash and Niko agreed to ferry her wherever she needed to go, and the rest of the conspirators followed along, all seeking to acquire their lost loot from the heist, and they set course for the only place in the Galaxy Ismail figured Fett might be headed if not Tatooine:  his and Ismail's home world of Kamino!

 

After a well executed hyperspace jump, they emerged back in realspace just south of the Rishi Maze, and carefully navigated to the watery planet of Kamino.  They received no resistance -- and indeed no response -- from traffic control and landed at one of the many empty landing pads of Tipoca City.  Vash, Niko and Quinn remained on board the Nerio as Ismail, Choree Kie and T-101 approached the entrance to the city.  They found the doors locked, but Ismail opened them with the Force.  They found the capital of the backwater world in some disrepair, but otherwise completely sterile and deserted.  Ismail accessed a computer terminal and found old records of the apartment the Kaminoans had provided for the "prime template" and his young "commission."  She visited the room and found a shrine to "Buir," Mand'oa for "father," and holo-images of Jango Fett adorned with votives lit by bio-luminescent fish.  Using her lightsaber, she etched her own message of amity to Boba, and left to join her comrades.  Meanwhile, Choree and T-101 encountered a Kaminoan security droid, which T-101 dispatched with his integrated arm-blaster.  Ismail rejoined her comrades as they were ambushed by, and defeated, two more security droids.  From the end of they corridor they heard a frightened yelp as a blast door closed, sealing some unseen operator -- and the only sign of life so far -- inside a command center.  Ismail tried to open the door with the Force, but could not override the heightened security protocols in place.  Choree used brute force, and smashed down the door with his massive bulk.  Inside, they found an undersized, malformed Kaminoan technician named Iomu Lo, who revealed that he was the "administrator" of Boba Fett's watery fortress ever since the bounty hunter, backed by Darth Vader's 501st Legion of Stormtroopers, invaded Tipoca City and wiped out all its occupants many years ago.  Ismail's interrogation of him revealed that Fett had arrived a few days ago to visit his armory, and departed just before they arrived.  Lo advised the intruders to leave at once before his "master" returned.  While Ismail agreed to respect Lo's advice, Choree Kie's lust for profit prompted him and T-101 to visit the armory first, to see what valuable loot Fett may have left behind.  Ismail accompanied them, but her loyalties lay elsewhere; she wished to protect Boba's interests in his own property.

 

The trio arrived in the bowels of Tipoca City, where Boba Fett had established an armory in the truest sense of the word.  In the middle of the far wall that made up the diameter segment of a large, semi-circular chamber, they saw a smaller, semi-circular dais, upon which was a semi-circular workshop enclosed in transparisteel and bereft of doors.  A span of alternating black, grey and white tiles, separated the entrance of the chamber from the workshop.  Inside the transparisteel-enclosed workshop labored a single human armorer with a trident-shaped scar over his right eye, slowly re-purposing a huge hunk of scorched, soil-encrusted hull plating to forge the parts of a half-completed suit of Mandalorian armor that adorned a mannequin affixed to a pole.  Choree Kie and T-101 recalled Quinn having referenced, during his drunken lamentations, a famous royal armorer of Hydraulis, Aitnaios, who bore a scar of such description after a run-in with a giant razor-crab at Hydraulis's Forbidden Triangle.  Indeed, the armorer, upon seeing the intruders, pressed his hands against the glass expectantly, revealing webbed fingers.  Ismail proceeded heedlessly across the tiled floor, activating a trap as her foot landed on the first tile.  A Kaminoan saberdart launched from the wall into her neck, instantly felling her.  As her limp body sprawled across a dozen tiles, the sound of servos could be heard from the walls as the firing mechanisms aimed, and a dozen more darts riddled her body.  Horrified, Kie and T-101 could only stand and stare as the armorer banged silently on the glass, trying to mouth a message.  Kie, having grown up as one of Faago's moppets, learned from the old kidsman the art of lipreading, and repeated the words aloud to T-101, who accessed his databanks and discovered the words to be the Mandalorian expression,"Verd ori'shya beskar'gam," "A warrior is more than his armor."  The armorer pointed to the tri-tone tiles, which Choree noticed bore Aurabesh letters.  Spelling out the proverb phonetically, Choree crossed the tiled floor unharmed and ascended the dais, where he saw the workshop up close, as well as the atmospheric charring and encrusted soil and grass on the enormous piece of hull plating.  Using his brute force again, Choree bashed his hulking Crolute frame again and again against the transparisteel until it shattered.  Blinded by profit, he lifted from the floor the pole to which was affixed the half-armor-clad mannequin.  In so doing, he unwittingly activated Fett's final failsafe device; the entire city began to shake and crumble, and water began gushing into the facility in tidal waves.  Choree and T-101 fled as fast as they could, the former carrying the armor-clad mannequin-on-a-stick, and the latter stooping to pick up Ismail's prone form.  Aitnaios was too slow, however, and was swept up and lost in a rushing, frothy upsurge.  As the raging waters pursued them, Choree and T-101 escaped to the exterior landing pad just in time, where Vash stood beckoning them on the open clam-shell door of the hovering Nerio, prepared to shuttle them to safety.  T-101 carried Ismail safely on board as the ramp began to close, but the water washed over Choree Kee just before the door sealed behind him, washing Fett's half-suit of Hydrasian alloy armor out of his grip and into the roiling sea of Kamino as the Nerio darted skyward.