#null 7

But he did it anyway. “Because it’s a weird lead. It’s weird that he said it in the first place. But Julgum is a karkin’ Senator. I can get through his entire library of information in less time than we’ve been talking about it. All I need is access to his office’s mainframe.”

All of this had started when Prudii had uncovered an interview aired on a fringe news source, featuring the senator from Farrfin. Senator Julgum wasn’t a popular man, mostly because of his unique and unpopular views. But Farrfin was notoriously corrupt and the general opinion was that his money had bought more votes than any of his politics had.

But the Null troopers didn’t care about politics - except maybe Ordo, who seemed to thrive on useless information. No, their only interest in Senator Julgum stemmed from the point in the interview when he said that the galaxy should be wary of clone troopers.

“I’ve received some information about the genes that the Kaminoans used,” he had claimed. “It all seems fine from the outside, but when you start to dig a little deeper… Well, let’s just say that I won’t be rushing to sign any clone rights bills into law until I figure out how far the problems run.”

The Nulls were split evenly between the two sides: Ordo, Jaing, and A’den thought it was a waste of time. Kom’rk, Prudii, and Mereel thought it was worth following up on. 

There was only one thing for it: Mereel looked over at where the figure of Kal Skirata stood, pondering the arguments in silence. “What do you think, Kal’buir?”

Silence settled over the Nulls as their adoptive father figure considered his answer. Whatever Kal Skirata decided, the group would do. That was the way it had always been, and he had never steered them in the wrong direction. Well, he had, but he always took any failures harder than the Nulls themselves did. 

“Mereel is right,” he said eventually, and Mereel felt a fierce pride spike through his chest at the implied praise. “It’s a lead, and we should follow up on any of those that come our way. Mer’ika, it won’t take you long to get into the Senator’s system, will it?”

“Not at all,” Mereel assured. “In and out in a few minutes at most. Then another day to sift through the data.”

“I think it’s a chance worth taking,” Kal said, glancing at the men around the room. Some were physically present, some were holographic, and all were watching him with the typical intensity born of being raised on the actively-hostile Kamino. “But I’m willing to hear arguments.”

“No, Kal’buir,” A’den refused. “If you think we should check it out, we will. Go for it, Mereel.”

Mereel flashed a grin, brimming with his typical confidence. “If the good senator has any real information, we’ll have it before the end of the week.”

Yes, confidence was never an issue with Mereel, but he would be the first to admit that accessing Julgum’s system was more difficult than anyone had expected.

The nearest he could figure was that the jetii had fixed up the network in Julgum’s office for him. Mereel would need the key code to access the network itself. Normally, that wasn’t much of a deterrent, but tracking down a key code took time. And this code in particular reset every few hours on an ever-changing time interval. 

Mereel was one of the better slicers in the galaxy, but even he had some limits. The effort it would take to access the senator’s office network just didn’t make sense, especially when the Nulls were working on a time limit. Even a slice code took time to construct, especially if the user wanted to keep anyone from knowing that the system had been breached.

Fortunately, there was a way around either necessity: he could contact the senator directly. If Mereel’s comlink was patched through to the senator himself, he would be able to access the mainframe and pull any (or all) information from the system without being detected and without spending weeks working on a functional slice code.

All he had to do was call.

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Author's Note - Thank you for giving this fic a chance! Since it's shorter than my typical chapters (by a lot), I'm posting the second chapter today as well. Feel free to check it out if you enjoyed this one!

You can find other works on my masterlist or sign up for my taglist here. The taglist for these first two chapters will contain people who asked to be tagged in new series and those who asked to be tagged in Legends materials. Part Three will only be those who edit their taglist choices. I'm happy to untag anyone who asks!