Tara’s back was starting to ache. She’d been hunched over her workbench for the better part of the day assembling the small cameras. Just a little larger than a human eyeball, the little devices were like little hemispheres, domed on one side where the multi directional camera was housed, and flat on the other side where a magnet was fixed to hold it to any metal surface.
Once she’d had the five cameras finished, she networked them into the configuration terminal and uploaded the basic closed-circuit wireless management program, followed by the encryption suite. Each camera would be wirelessly networked together and managed by an interface on her terminal back at her apartment, which would then record and host the feeds on that makeshift private server. Her last task was setting up her datapad to access those feeds, but after all the work she’d done on the cameras and the encrypted wireless network controller, that was the easy part.
This wasn’t exactly what Teh’beli had told her to do, but Teh’beli was not her master, and this solution was a much more subtle way to approach the objective. Finishing up with her datapad, and after testing it to make sure she could access both live and recorded feeds from the cameras, she cleaned up her tools on the bench and packed up the datapad and cameras. She donned her disguise once more and headed out into the city. Czerka no doubt had cameras placed around the main thoroughfares, but she needed to get the shadier places under surveilance.
It wasn’t that long ago that she’d removed surveilance devices from her own prosthetic arm, placed there by Lanari. She’d since replaced that arm with a better, less “buggy” one, though she was not advertising that fact. Now it was her who was going to be putting up surveilance to catch Duskhaven. The irony was far from lost on her.
Tara rounded the corner into an alleyway, dressed head to toe in her bounty hunter outfit, and she began checking around, first making sure there was noone watching, then floating one of the cameras up behind her to attach under the building overhang. After securing the camera with the force, she moved on to another spot in the maze of alleyways, depositing another, and then another of the cameras. Before rounding one corner, she heard voices. She paused, stretching out with her senses and a ways past them, she gave a little push and some precariously stacked crates toppled over. The people around the corner, she could feel two of them, turned their attention towards the ruckus, and while their backs were turned, she floated another camera up and mounted it.
She was nearly done. She doubled back and made her way around from a different approach. Carefully avoiding any more thugs or loiterers, she placed the last of the cameras and then headed back out of the alleyways. From there, she walked back to her apartment. She entered and crossed over to the workbench where her makeshift camera server was set up.
With a few taps in the terminal, the controller was up and running. She checked her datapad to make sure the feeds were coming in. So far so good. The feeds occasionally shifted direction wherever movement was detected, whether it was a small bird, or someone passing nearby.
Perfect she thought. Now she just had to wait and let the recordings index for movement events, then go back and check them later.
Not what Teh asked her to do, but this was better in Tara’s mind. Now she had time to sit and think. A lot had happened last night and she was in a way avoiding thinking about it. She preferred occupying herself. It kept her focused and undistracted. So much some times that it was an escape from everything that was bothering her. And there was a lot bothering her.
She lowered herself to the floor and sat crosslegged, closing her eyes and beginning breathing exercises.
Stray thoughts crossed her mind. Last night, being called an idiot, being told to be quiet, being told repeatedly that her ideas were worthless. She forced herself to let go of the insults, however. Her old master told her a jedi had no time to worry about insults or injured pride. All that mattered was the force and serving it’s will. Men have pride, but a jedi cannot. A jedi does not live for themselves. They live for others. For the force.
Slowly, she let the thoughts and worries and troubles wash over and past her, letting her mind go blank, until all she knew was the force…