The Dallet Series - Smuggler Fiction	

FrankLee
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FrankLee
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Everything I tell you is a lie. - Vergere
Right turn Clyde! - Clint Eastwood
Humans are SUPERIOR! - John Crichton
The Dallet Series (ongoing story) 

	
	I tapped another stim-stick to my arm and rested my head back against the smelly headrest. It was beyond adjustment, permanently stuck a few inches too short to be of any real comfort.
"You need to steal better ships," she said. "This one stinks." My newest travelling companion was getting on my nerves already. One night I was too drunk to remember, one morning I was too hung over to want to remember, and one afternoon... I suppose in my recent history she's what I'd consider a long term relationship.
"I didn't want to steal this one. I had another one in mind," I informed her primly, while patting the pockets of my blast vest, looking for another stim-stick.
"Oh yeah, I remember. That would be the one that shot the POODOO out of us, right?"
I grunted. Women were great at sarcasm, and they didn't even need any drugs to get that way.
"Yeah, that one. Maybe if you'd kept your mouth shut, it would have gone off better." Truth be told, she didn't really fumble the operation, but it wouldn't hurt to have her think that.
"ME? I had him eating out of my hand!" She had, really. Like I said, it wasn't her fault. It was a harebrained scheme cooked up between bouts of stranger-sex and cheap booze. Add to that my infallibly bad luck, and you've got our present situation. As the stim kicked in (finally, damn cheap sticks), I thought back on the comedy that had been our 'plan'.

"So I go in, distract him right at the ramp of his ship, and get him to leave?"
"Yeah, promise him your um, attention, and get him back in the starport. I'll slip aboard, slice his navicomp, and get out of there."
"Can you do that?"
"What do you mean can I do that? I sliced this rent-a-room, didn't I?"
"I thought you bashed it in with your shoulder." Oh yeah, I thought, I did. That would explain the bruise.
"Well, who do you think cut the security connection?"
"Hmph. So I lure him out, then what? I'm not sleeping with a Rodian."
"I don't blame you, " said I. I don't think I've slept with any Rodians, but there are significant gaps in my memory.
"So, what then?"
"Then you make up an excuse to leave, catch a commuter shuttle to Balliztok and I'll pick you up there."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Trust me."

It hadn't gone just like that.
The girl, I can't even remember her name, was pretty good at what she did. She had that Rodian away from his ship, and while he didn't leave the boarding ramp down for me, he left it in a low-security mode that let me get aboard pretty quickly. I sliced the navicomp easily and took off.
I probably should have familiarized myself with the terrain. Ground Control doesn't like it when you fly super-atmospheric to make a jump of a few miles. Apparently they're a whole lot more concerned with clearances and inspections and stuff like that than the places I normally frequent.
I had to travel at low-altitude, on a planet with a lot of mountains. Every time I got up just a mile or three above a range, some **edit** would radio me and give me a new vector. The commuter shuttle actually beat me to Balliztok. The girl was there waiting for me. So was the Rodian.

We left the shuttle (incidentally, called 'High Tide' for some obscure reason) on the tarmac, and went off gleefully to purchase some supplies. Our vacation was going to need some staples, and I was already running short of stim-sticks and booze. I was also low on pre-vent pills, and that's a major no-no with same-species relations.
The offended party started shooting at us as soon as we left the 'zone'.
There's a zone around most starports, where the police make active patrols, and make a big show of arresting tourists with the wrong documentation, rough up homeless folks, and generally civilize things. Right outside that zone is where the wheels of commerce actually turn, the good things really get bought, and the police stop caring what you do.
That's where the shooting started.

My luck, like the tide apparently, was in. Neither of us got hit, and we both made it back to the zone in relative health. Our collective health spiked for a moment when we realized that the High Tide was now rotated in its berth, having obviously been occupied by its rightful owner. This presented 2 problems. First and foremost, our vacation was going to be postponed indefinitely. Remember that right then, I hadn't actually spent much time talking to... what was her name again? Anyway, I was looking forward (then) to a few days of fun and frolick in our galaxy's hotspots, so certain portions of my psyche (and my physiology) were upset by this proposition. The second problem won out as a priority though, because it was life-threatening. If the Rodian was back on his ship, who'd been shooting at us?
It didn't take long to figure out; the little **edit** had paid someone to snuff us out, or wait us out then snuff us out. They were easy to spot just outside the zone, they were the ones grinning so damned much at my predicament. Attempts at negotiation were cut short by another hail of blaster fire, close enough to the starport to attract the attention of the police. The police weren't buying my 'lost tourist and his wife' routine either, after I forgot her name in their presence. I think secretly they might have had a few credits on which of us would survive the longest. At least they didn't grin openly.

In the end, an opportunity for escape presented itself. I have a feeling some of the Rodian's money helped it materialize. In retrospect, I should have learned by then never to trust my luck. Where the Rodian's vessel was a slight difficulty to enter illicitly, the second vessel I stole that day was just asking to be stolen. The boarding plank was lowered, and the pilot had made a big show of needing 'a few more things' for the long haul, right after he'd fueled up. As he bustled out, the girl and I couldn't believe our luck (and we shouldn't have) at the coincidence. The Rodian even gave us a sporting lead this time, letting us get beyond the system's patrols and out into the freespace where ships jump to and decelerate from hyperspace.
The navicomputer was tied into a droid-brain controller for the ship, and proved to be difficult to slice. I succeeded in getting into the navigational controls about the same time the Rodian radioed us and openend fire. The woman didn't understand him too well, so she kept asking for a translation. I figured it was better she not know, so I lied and said he wanted to negotiate. I think when he slagged our only turret she figured out I was lying.
The navicomp was very upset with the jump I'd plotted. I hadn't really plotted it exactly... hyperspace jumps take a tremendous amount of calculation and adjusment. There's celestial bodies, each exerting a certain amount of gravity, and projecting mass shadows into hyperspace, and that kind of garbage. I did the equivalent of pointing its nose in the right direction and slapping it on its ass, right about the time that damned rodian cooked most of the hyperdrive control circuits.

"This place stinks." So she was back to that again.
"You said that. I think that guy set us up, I think he wanted us to steal this ship so the Rodian could shoot us." I mused.
"Gee genius, you think?" I gave her a flat look.
"What was his name, anyway?" I tried to deflect her ire, while I thought about our options.
"Spakta something. I think he was a bounty hunter."
"Lovely."
"You picked the ship."
"You could have told me! We were lifting a ride from a friggin bounty hunter? No wonder he was angry. I didn't think Rodians went in for us humans anyway."
"I'm multitalented, " she mumbled sheepishly.
"Hah, don't I know it!" She hit me, rather hard, then locked herself in the fresher. From the noises she made, I gathered the room was misnamed.

We were in trouble. We came out of hyperspace rather abruptly. Sometimes you can get away with it, coming in at an angle at a mass shadow like that. The hyperdrive cuts out from some kind of strain (I couldn't explain the math anyway, so why bother) and you slow to space-normal speeds. If you come in too straight on the mass, you end up flattening the ship down to its theoretical density maximum, at which point it becomes incandescent for about a second before you return to the space that made you, all 100-billion particles going in random directions. If you come in too shallow, you either don't come out of the jump at all, or your course is so screwed up it takes your computer a month to replot it. We came in pretty flat, so we were ok in that department. The problem was, the navicomputer sucked, and the droid brain running the show was seriously put out by being stolen, shot at, and flung randomly through dangerous jumps. It took me 45 minutes to slice it to the point that it would consider calculating our location. It said that the calculation would take another hour (was that smugness I heard in its voice?) and that there were certain issues with the hyperdrive that would not let it escape the system anyway. Fantastic.
We were in escape pod range of a livable planet, but it had only the most rudimentary of civilizations on it; only one Imperial-installed automated starport for emergency landings. Our pods (and us, frankly) would stand out like a sore thumb on that planet. We'd cost this Spakta character about 45 minutes of trouble while he tracked us and then ionized us with his ships guns. Or maybe he'd enjoy himself and chase us on foot, but either way our odds sucked. I considered selling the woman to him, but who knows how the natives felt about that. I doubt she'd have caught a very fair price anyway, she was human after all.

Our ship had two escape pods. Escape pods are really poorly named. They should be called collection pods. You jettison something, usually yourself, into space when it becomes impossible to live in the craft that got you to the scene of the accident. Those little deathboxes really just need a few hours of your atmosphere of choice and a recording device for posterity; everything else is overkill. You aren't going to survive more than a few hours of radiation, you aren't going to starve to death, and you certainly aren't going to come safely down on a gravity-normal planet if your 'rescue' crew doesn't get to you pretty quickly. What you will do, if you're conscious when you eject, is describe your miserable situation to the recorder, declare the disposition of your worldly wealth (in the off chance that your surviving relatives haven't stolen it already), and vent your atmosphere because you're screwed.
As I tried to size up which of the pods had the better recording device and how badly I'd lie to it (hey, posterity could use a few laughs), I started to get angry. It was probably from not having been able to resupply with stimsticks. Having withdrawl symptoms while comtemplating my own demise was not a thrilling prospect. In fact, coupled with the smell, the crappy atmosphere mix, and some kind of psychic funk coming from my companion in the fresher, I was getting pretty damnably aggravated. I cracked the seal on the first pod, and leaned in to inspect it. Apparently whichever bold soul had owned the ship before I appropriated it had decided that the escape pod could double as a chill unit for exotic foods. Maybe he had some kind of agreement with the atmospheric logic circuits, but since I didn't, I must have killed the softseal on the pod a while back. Either way, it smelled like all the lizards in the universe had gathered for a some kind of culinary contest and used the pod as a vomitorium. I used the pod as a vomitorium too, and I actually think I improved its overall stink with my addition. I know I didn't help help the smell in the control cabin.
"Other pod." I said to myself, sagely.

Escape pods can't really escape anything either. Sometimes they can 'escape' the crumbling wreckage of your last joyride, but that doesn't really count. Suitably motivated, you could 'escape' it yourself by taking a good stiff sprint towards a weakened bulkhead. Pods had very limited navigational thrust, and only the most rudimentary of navicomputers. Since they were primarily 'float and wait' or 'crash into the mass' kind of calculations, the computers didn't need to be very smart. They usually made pretty good voice recorders for the recently deceased. Either that, or they were pretty keen on telling the occupant that they lacked the thrust to assume a proper atmospheric entry angle, and that the occupant should take advantage of their superior voice recording capabilities because he she or it would be dead pretty soon.
I checked the second pod. No formerly food items, so it met my criteria for (limited) survivability. I ransacked the first aid kit and found that the same genius who'd stored exotic meals in the other pod had in fact included a dozen stim sticks in his medical supplies. I wondered briefly what he'd removed from the pack to make room for the drugs, but decided if it was something like yavinian snake anti-venom that I could live with the swap. I praised his innovative use of the first aid kit, and tapped a double-dose of liquid optimism.

While I leaned back against the wall, a glimmer of a plan started to form.

 07-27-2004 08:31 PM

<3

(Now)
I slipped into my e-suit and checked its seals. Being a responsible sort of guy, I double-tapped some more stim, knowing that it'd be awfully hard to do in zero-atmosphere. The seals seemed to hold, but the suit was tight in the shoulders and the groin. At least the canned air only smelled stale, and not like rotten food. I set her pod to 'ready' and went back up front to the recalcitrant navicomputer.
"Where are we?" I asked, but it must have been muffled by the visor. I knew it was wasting air, but I left it sealed. I liked the smell better.
"We are in the Dallet system. We are in unstable orbit around Dallet-2. Our orbit will decay to significant friction and entry at or about 221 hours from now."
"I'm not worried, we won't be here that long." We wouldn't. Well, I suppose it was a bit of a metaphysical question as to actually where we'd really _be_ in about an hour, because I figured the girl and myself would be dead by then. Let the droid figure out the rest in the remaining 220 hours.
"Hyperdrive is not operational. We will be here."
"No, maybe you will but the girl and I are checking out."
"This vessel does not retain suitable maneuvering to negotiate a safe planetfall."
"I know, we'll try for it in the pods." I said, a bit smug.
"Shall I reprogram the pods? They are not properly programmed for re-entry. One of them is dangerously overridden..."
"No, they're fine, " I said quickly. "In 5 minutes, I want you to vent the atmosphere of this ship."
"That is against my programming."
"Mine too, but you're going to do it."
"I cannot be compelled."
"Sure you can, I sliced the navigations, I can slice you."
The droidbrain thought about that. For droids, a pause of 1 second must have been a tremendously lengthy consideration. It knew I had it over a barrel, I'd slice it if it didn't cooperate, and I wasn't that good, so I might mess up its personality.
"You cannot slice me." It didn't seem so sure of itself now.
"I sure can, I did it..."
"You cannot slice me in 4.8 minutes, to meet your deadline." That **edit** computer had a good point. Timing was more than tricky on this one, and I sure wasn't what we'd call fast, in my business.
"I.. Crap. I could just blast a hole in here, and let out some air!"
"Your pod would launch, and you would be stuck on the ship."
"I can hack the pod, it'll stay." I said, smugly.
"Not in 4.1 minutes."
Crap, it was right. Again.
"What's your deal, computer? You just don't like me? I've been shot at, stunk up, underdosed, overdosed, stuffed into this crappy suit, and stranded around..."
"Dallet-2"
"Dallet-2. Stranded around Dallet-2. I've never even heard about this place, and I don't want to die here. So what's your problem? You're a droid, you're a ship-brain, let us go."
"I do not wish to die here either. I wish to make an agreement. You will not leave me behind." He was beginning to remind me of the woman. I was running out of time.
"Alright, fine. We'll catch back up to you when the rescue squad gets us, and tow you back."
"I do not trust you, human."
"Nobody trusts me, be original." Fantastic. I could picture the headlines already: Master Smuggler talked to death by Nervous NaviComp.
"I have depleted the atmospheric reserves in your pod. You have 6 hours to recouple to this ship, or you will run out of air."
"Fine, that works."
"Acceptable. I will vent atmosphere in 3 minutes."
"Hey droid, " I said, feeling relief and dread at the same time, "put the extra air in the girl's pod."
"Already accomplished." It intoned, and it had a tinny air of finality.

(Before)

The escape pod didn't have a very bright computer. That was good, because I'm not a particularly bright guy, and when you consider the addition of the strain, the smell, and the primo stim-sticks I'd found in the first aid kit, I wasn't going to be fast-talking any Hutts. Actually, I figured right then I'd probably never see any Hutts ever again. Odds were, I wouldn't be seeing too much of anyone again. At least I wouldn't have to worry about the interest on my 'loans'. Still, I thought, it's a matter of professional pride; I shouldn't be having such a hard time slicing the droidbrain on an escape pod.
*Bleep*
There, I now wasn't having such a hard time.
"Show me engine parameters," said I, leaning back to look up at the screen. Somewhere some Verpine has decided that all monitors should be at a standardized angle, to account for all the various spacefaring races. Just like standardized blast vests, standardized protein-bars, and standardized toiletries (I winced at the thought), standardized view screens suck too.
-Navigational thrusters: Full charge
-Navigational thrusters: 100 impulse-seconds of thrust available.
-Hyperspace thrust unavailable.
-Interplanetary (insystem) navigation unavailable.
Hmm, thought I. Seemed pretty standard, but what I wanted to do wasn't standard.
"Display safety parameters assuming human passenger."
-Atmospheric mix: Human-optimum
-Atmospheric duration (0.9 atmospheres pressure, 8 respirations/minute 1L/respiration, single occupant): 96 hours
-Grav stress not to exceed 2 standard planetary gravities for more than 4 minutes.
-Beacon signal strength not to exceed -
"That's enough." I stopped the readout. It seemed pretty normal. I needed something a little less... safe, for my scheme.

"What did you do? This place smells even worse now!" She'd come out of the fresher, at least.
"Uh, nothing. This place stinks. You want me to open the windows and air it out some?" Guess I needed another stick, I was getting cranky again.
"Very funny. If we screw around long enough, Spakta will take care of the smell."
"I've been working on a plan, while you were powdering your nose."
"I wasn't powdering my nose, " she said, offended. She had a nice nose. In fact, she had several good qualities, all of them visual in nature. It was listening to her that was not so much fun.
"Whatever, I've got a plan."
"Like what, we beg for mercy? We land and try to hide?"
"I don't think this guy's big on mercy." Nobody's big on mercy, unless they're into religion. Nobody's into religion, unless they're Jedi. Jedi are all crazy anyway.
"Rodians aren't big on anything."
"So that's why I'm not going down to the planet, " I said. I wasn't. At no point was my plan to end up on a backwater trade outpost, waiting to be extradited or killed... or both.
"You? What about me."
"We, uh, we. That's why we're not going down to the planet." Woops, forgot to tell her about that part. Pods are built for one occupant.
"Don't be getting any ideas, you can't use me to bargain with. He doesn't want me."
"Oh? You guys looked like you were really hitting it off back there. I thought he liked you." Maybe he did, sometimes Rodians dig humans. What they like them for is a mystery to me.
"Everbody likes me, " she said wearily, "We hit it off. But it didn't go so good when I had to leave. He wanted me to stay."
"So, tell him you needed to buy a pack of deathsticks and move on, what's the trouble?" I said that, wishing I'd done it myself back in the hotel about 6 hours ago.
"He didn't want me to go, so I told him his... thing was too small for humans."
I stared at her blankly. She had to be kidding.
"He got upset, but I got out."
"No way! You told a bounty hunter he had a small... " I left it dangling, I suppose somewhere between stimhits and pixie dust the proper noun lived in my mind, but like I said, I love the spice, and I pay the price.
"He scared me. I had to get out, it was the first thing I could think of." She wasn't apologizing exactly, more like angrily rationalizing.
"Great job, it's not every day you can make them chase you halfway across the galaxy. Apparently they're self-conscious. He'll probably use his biggest gun to shoot us now. Great."

She sat in silence for a while, while I finished up with the pods. Hers was easy, but it stank. Mine was harder, and I thought maybe I screwed something up, but since it wasn't a government job I didn't really have time to go back and check.
"Alright, into the pod, " I said to her.
"No way, you take that one. It REEKS."
"Sorry honey, it's got the best seal, it's all yours." Their seals were fine, I thought, but I like to pretend to be chivalrous when I'm high.
"No way, you get the stinky one." She stood up and pointed, getting really angry with me. I suppose she was also angry about being put in it alone. I had dished out most of the rotting food into the airlock (which we wouldn't need anyway), but it still did reek. It probably always would, I thought.
She squeezed a little closer. I don't know whether she was trying to play the bully angle, or moving in to maybe sweet talk me a bit. She was really good at sweet talking. Too bad I didn't have time to check, but between the smell and my impending demise, I doubt I could have enjoyed it. I'll never know.
I did what came naturally. I slugged her. She went down in a heap.
I packed her into her pod. I felt the briefest twinge of remorse, locking her in there. I knew what I had planned for her, and it certainly wasn't all that honorable. Before I cycled the lock, I dug 3 twists of sedative out of my pocket. Taken separately, they'd keep her low and quiet for 8 hours. Taken together, they'd keep her that way for eternity. If things went south, I hoped she'd use them the right way.

(Now)

I punched out, later than I wanted. Arguing with the voice in the cockpit had taken too long. The explosive separation from the hull propelled me rather forcefully toward the planet. I burned 91 impulse-seconds of thrust in the same direction. Nine seconds of thrust left over. The warning lights from the pod computer blinked to life, warning that my approach vector was unacceptable. It really was. Coming into an atmosphere is a tricky business, and I never would have tried it stoned. You have to hit a sweet spot, where you come in just hot enough to cut, but shallow enough not to crash into the wall of atmosphere. In the business, we call those boundaires 'burn or bounce'. Too shallow, you zip off into space like a skipping stone. Too sharp, you provide some aboriginal people with an amazing light show for about 10 seconds, and maybe found a religion or two.
Luckily, I wasn't trying for entry, I just wanted to hitchhike.
Everybody knows the 'dead pod' trick. Sometimes you double up in another pod, sometimes you pay to fly off in another ship, but it's a smuggling tradition to dead-pod something down to the planet, making your hunter waste time checking the site out for survivors. Everybody knows the trick, and I figured Spakta wouldn't fall for it. Spakta seemed like a pretty sharp, pretty patient hunter, even if he did have a small wang. Hard to surprise one of those guys, but it can be done. Lots of stuff can be done when you're riding a stimstick and running out of atmosphere.

I rounded quarter-apogee at 3g before I passed out. If you sling yourself around a big enough mass, you can go pretty fast. I wasn't in it for speed exactly, I was in it for time. The problem was, planets like orbits. They like you to orbit too, at least long enough to slow you down and eat you. I couldn't do that, I needed to be gone for an hour or so, then come back... but I couldn't be in orbit. Orbit screams: "Shoot me" to a bounty hunter. I need something a bit more spectacular.

Orbital tourism has never appealed to me. When I'm on the job, I don't orbit unless I'm making a swap. I don't stop to look, I don't stop to ponder, I don't stop for anything. Make the buy, make the drop, make a buck, and hit dirt so you can spend it; that's my motto. I thought it was a good way to live. I'm sure it's a good way to die. While I sped around Dallet-2 though, I had plenty of time to gawk. Well, I had time before the g's caught up and I napped.
I'd been in space my whole life, one way or another. I'd never stopped to think that I didn't settle down because it pulled at me the way Dallet-2 was pulling at me, I only thought that some other planet was always offering just a bit more profit, just a bit slower bounties, or just a bit sweeter women. That was all bogus, all self-delusion. Space is big and beautiful, dark and deadly. It's gigantic and heartless, but it welcomes all travellers. All I wanted was to be out in space, one way or another. Fitting, I guess, since I was going to end up in it for a long, long time if things went pear-shaped.

I woke back up post-apogee at 1g or so, and things weren't so good.
All but two of the console lights had burned out when the viewport had shattered. I didn't know why exactly the viewport had shattered, but I suspected that part of the heat shielding had hit it, because that was gone too. Good thing I'd been in the suit, because the indicator said that the cabin had been without atmosphere for 37 minutes. Being unconscious, I'd used up less of the suit's air than normal, which was good. What wasn't good was the fact that I'd been sponging radiation for about half that time; the heat shield had been the majority of my radiation 'protection'. Maybe the suit kept some out, it kept smells out, right? One doom at a time.
I was still moving along pretty well, but dragging some negative delta-vee's as I rotated past the half-circle limit of my slingshot. The brain on this pod wasn't that hot, but it had classical orbits figured, and I wasn't too worried about other gravity effects.
"Calculate intercept trajectory requirement for docking with... that." I said, and tapped a touch screen.
-Emergency Transmission Beacon disabled-
"Fine, I don't want to talk anyway, just figure out a docking vector."
-Insufficient thrust remains to dock safely.-
"Alright, how about unsafely?" I asked, getting worried. The cute little readout indicated we'd still be pulling 41 m/s by the time we intercepted our target, if we didn't correct.

Our target, incidentally, was the same vessel I'd tried to steal earlier in the day, the 'High Tide'. Of course Spakta hadn't bitten on the deadpod bait. I'd hedged my bet using the woman as bait too, but if he'd taken her maybe he'd have been satisfied and left. Either way, I could have (maybe) redocked, tried for repairs or a landing, and left without her. Sure, it's a bit callous, but I'd be a bit _alive_ too, and when it all comes down to it, you'd do the same thing. If you were smart enough anyway. Didn't matter, Spakta didn't take the bait. I really didn't think he would have, but I like to play both sides. I hoped vaguely that she'd awakened to drop a little sedative and go back to sleep. She had plenty of air, but if my next trick didn't work the air wouldn't help.

-Deceleration calculation complete. Insufficient maneuverability with safe deceleration.-
"Ok, what's safe docking speed?"
-0.5 m/s or less. Zero relative torque.-
"How slow can we go and still manage to hit it?" I asked, thinking about a tradeoff between accuracy and speed. When you start thinking of yourself as a projectile, you should consider changing your line of work.
-3.7 m/s with minor torque-
"3.7? That doesn't sound so bad. Will the lock survive the impact?"
-Airlock specifications unknown.-
"Uh, crap. How about us, will the pod survive the lock?"
-Fully shielded pod would have a 92% chance to suffer catastrophic collapse.-
"What about a pod without some shielding?" Nice, I thought. What about a pod that's already suffered decompression, genius? I needed another stim pretty badly.
-Structure collapse approaches certainty.-
"Well, in about 2 minutes we'll know for sure, eh?"
-Intercept in 1.7 minutes.-
"Are you equipped with self-preservation subroutines?"
-I have no self-preservation drive.-
"Damn, that's got to be nice."

I had been hoping Spakta was smart, and perhaps a bit insecure. Maybe the girl had been right about his... shortcomings. He'd ionized the crap out of our vessel before he boarded it. He probably scanned it 8 ways before he got close, and had his ship set to bolt if anything dicey happened. Besides the deadpod trick, smugglers are known for a variety of other nasty surprises. Sometimes they blew their own ships up, sometimes they rammed the competition and prayed for good luck. I was hoping to earn a few drinks off my little maneuver, which I was already calling the live-pod.
Spakta, probably having hunted and killed a bunch of us already, was playing it safe. He'd come up guns blazing, and utterly disabled us. I figured the droidbrain had gone relatively painlessly in the first salvo; ionizing energy usually hit them pretty hard. After that, the High Tide had probably docked, Spakta had debarked, and then the ship had unlocked and automatically backed off to a safe distance. No sense leaving the occupants, if alive, with a means of escape. This Spakta fellow was pretty sharp. I wish I'd known how long he'd be on our piece of garbage, because then I'd have known if he was done looking yet.
I don't suppose I cared too much, whenever he wanted the ship he'd call it back, and that would be that. With any luck, I'd be 'intercepting' before then.

Luck is a funny thing. Funny like finding out you accidentally requested an alien bodyservant of the wrong gender. My luck has always had a sick sense of humor, so I shouldn't have been all that surprised at how things played out.

I keyed the sequence that told the computer in the pod to start decelerating and to aim us lock-on at the High Tide. I watched our relative velocity on the gauge once we straightlined for the ship.
5.9 m/s.
5.5.
5.1.
"We're getting pretty close, are we going to stop soon enough?"
-Calculation was based on an unsafe intercept. No stop was calculated.-
"Er, yeah, but I mean are we going to get down to... 3.7?"
-Earlier calculation may have been in error. New calculation shows intercept final speed at 4.8 m/s.-
"4.8? Holy Palpatine, can I survive that?"
-You would not have survived 3.7.-
"Well, doesn't that suck." I wished I could have at least died with a good high.

Ten seconds out, something funny happened. Spakta must have decided that he was done looking through our ship. I'm sure the smell helped decide him. Either way, he called his ship. The ship only needed to move a kilometer through space to reconnect, so it didn't start moving very fast.
Just a few meters a second, away from me. That's all it took.

-Docking complete. Intercept occurred at 1.4 m/s. Airlock intergrity confirmed. Pod integrity compromised.-
"I love you, you stupid droid."

After that, it was all downhill. Even the small bump on the High Tide caused it some alarm, and it corrected to a halt. About the time it was signalling Spakta that the redock had been aborted, I was repressurizing the airlock. By the time Spakta figured out what had happened, and overrode the safety checks, I was in the cockpit. The smell was immensely better than my previous accomodations.
I started to slice the navicomp, but it was a little smarter than me. Ok, it was a lot smarter than me. I'm pretty sure it liked Spakta better than me too, because it started to acknowledge him and pick up the redock procedure, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Navigation was locked. This Spakta guy was pretty clever about that. Not so clever about the communications, but who'd bother with communications out here?
Communications was unlocked. The console looked so inviting, and so... clean. I could see the indicator from the girl's pod, transmitting the universal 'I'm about to die, please help' kind of message in basic and a few other languages. I ignored that. If she was dead already, she'd have all eternity to torment me in hell if I didn't get to work. I looked for another trace, the indicator that would show me the link between Spakta and the High Tide. It was easy, because Spakta was smart and insecure. The comm dish was set to receive a tight-beam, relatively weak signal from a single source. Spakta wanted it hard for someone to take over his ship remotely. He'd probably never planned for someone to just sit down in his comfortable chair and ignore him though.
"Comm: Disable incoming feed uh... B." I said aloud.
"Feed B is a secure channel. This channel is persistent and cannot be changed without approval. Speak security sequence." Spoke a simulated rich voice.
"Crap." Said I.
"That sequence is incorrect."
"Comm: Retarget receiver."
"Enter new receiver target."
"The other escape pod."
"Retarget complete. Feed B link lost." The voice didn't seem happy or sad about it, it just did it. It continued in a slightly different voice, probably because it was coming from the nav console instead now. "Maneuver aborted. Require local input."
"Nice. Now we're friends. Jettison that piece of crap attached to the airlock. Close with the other pod and maneuver for pickup."
"Acknowledged."

"Repressurization complete."
"Good, open the damned door then." I was antsy, I still didn't know if the girl had taken the quick way out or not. It's pretty hard to keep a stiff upper lip when you're staring at an eternity of space. Maybe she'd only taken one twist.

I'd almost forgotten about the smell. Almost. I'm sure it won't happen again, I still wake up dreaming about that smell sometimes.
When the door finally rotated out of the way, I got a look at her. She was pretty pale. Pale the way people get when they've been dead for a little while. Drugs do that. Hypoxia does that. Being dead does that. I bent to feel for a pulse...

(Later)

I keyed the panel, and opened a conventional communication channel back to what was now Spakta's ship. I got the droid. I tried to leave a message, but it wanted to talk.
"We had a deal. I wish to continue function. You must remove me from this vessel."
"Listen, that's going to be tricky because... well, that Spakta guy is on the ship now, and he's a pretty tough character..." I was feeling a little sheepish, but relatively secure in my shiny new cockpit, with my shiny new guns. It wasn't taking the edge off of my mood; every few seconds I remembered the escape pod.
"Your deal was recorded - " he played my voice back to me over the link. I sounded high. I guess I had been. I still had a stick left, so I used it.
"I know what I said, but things have changed."
"DAMN RIGHT, " a new voice broke in. It was high pitched and angry, had to be Spakta. "You will get off of my ship right now, and pick me up!"
"Hey buddy, it's my ship now. And I'd have to pick you up first anyway. You got any money?"
He cursed a lot, he was pretty good at it. Probably came from a life of having a tiny tool. "Look, we can cut a deal human. I want the girl, maybe you can keep the ship, maybe even make some more money on the side. I've got plenty of money."
While I considered him a wierd kind of sensation came over me just then. You see, normally I don't feel too strongly one way or another... I go with whatever nets me the most cash, or drugs, or women, or whatever. I'd probably have taken his money, taken his ship, and maybe even sold him later on... normally. But normal went out the window like precious atmosphere when I opened her pod's hatch. Normal took a vacation when I stood there remembering who'd put her in the pod. I had put her in the pod. What happened out there, whatever she thought... I did that. Some things shouldn't have a price tag.
"I don't think you want the girl now Spakta." I could feel my tone going flat and dead, but I was already there. The stimstick couldn't touch this, I doubted anything could.
"Either way, I want off! You can't leave me here to die!"
"I sure as hell can. I did to her, and I liked her."
There was more cursing, then it got quiet. I liked quiet, it suited me just then. Something inside me had eaten up the stim and spit it out. Something bad. I scrambled the comm channel and reconnected, this time encrypted. I figured the computer would get it, and it did. I still waited a few minutes to see if Spakta would launch into another tirade. Hours ago, it would have been a bargaining tactic. It wasn't this time. I guess I felt like I owed the droid something.
"Look, droidbrain, about our deal... this is going to be tough, but I think I can manage something-"
"That's no longer necessary." It cut me off.
"Huh? You don't want off?" I was confused. Confused was better than quiet, so I stayed with it.
"Your offer is appreciated, but you should move to a different orbit soon." I keyed up a new orbit, very high, just in case. High Tide responded without fanfare.
"Eh? Why, I can't get you off from there, maybe we can download something-"
"Not possible. Spakta has been working on the engines. They will be overloading-"
Bang. Just like that, the floating garbage heap that had brought me to Dallet-2 turned into a very bright light. Spakta was one vindictive Rodian. The vidscreens turned opaque for a while to compensate. Diagnostic sensors went off all over the cabin, but that was a good sign. It would have been worse if nothing had happened.
I keyed the query button on the console.
"Any damage?"
"Minor damage. Forward turbolaser disabled. Structure unaffected."
"Good."
"Escape pod was blastward. Escape pod was not accounted for in shielding. Escape pod has been destroyed."
"That's alright, she don't need it anymore."

07-29-2004 12:41 AM

<3

(Then)

I sealed the space side of the door, leaving me in the airlock proper. It reeked. I hoped to keep the smell out of the main ship, but really it wasn't a conscious thought so much as a habitual response. You learn early to manage air on a spaceship. If you don't manage well, you don't have to worry about it because you go to sleep and don't wake up. The thought of that never frightened me too much, because a painless, unconscious death always seemed the way to go. I guess it was the way to go if you weren't the guy cleaning up afterwards. I had only checked in on her before for a second, and it looked like I was going to be running cleanup on this one.
As I stood there staring at the escape pod, the stink didn't exactly go away, but it became a lot less important.
I listened for a while. I wasn't in a hurry, really. I settled down on my heels and waited for the gas scrubbers to finish a cycle. It was hard to hear over them, and if she was breathing, I wanted to hear it first. I didn't want to touch her and break the spell. It was like quantum hyperspace experiments; until I proved it one way or the other, she was both alive and dead. When you jumped into hyperspace, you were kinda in both places at once. But the second I touched her, she'd be just one thing forever. I didn't want to be the one that made her that way, but it was my fault either way.
I had knocked her out.
I stuffed her in that reeking little pod.
I used her as bait, like a piece of bantha-haunch.
I gave her enough drugs to let her kill herself.
I left her out there to die.
Whatever she ended up, I'd already made her that way. She was pale and her eyelids were blue. She hadn't moved since the door swung open. My hands shook, badly. I always had steady hands, even when I was high. It was not a good sign.
The scrubber cycled, and the air stopped moving. It was like the ship was holding its breath. I know I was.
I heard something. A breath maybe. I saw her chest rising and falling, slowly, almost imperceptibly. I started breathing again. The scrubber cycled again, trying vainly to clean some of the fetid air out of the lock. I dragged her out of the pod, but she didn't seem to notice; she stayed unconscious the whole time. I got her to what I guess was the lounge, and set her up on the table.
I patted her down, and found what I'd been looking for. 1 twist of sedative, with the end bitten roughly off. Looking closely, I could see some of the drug staining her lips. She must have been too 'dosed to get the last hit down. One shot would have numbed her. Two should have put her out for a day, three would have put her out forever. She'd hit two, but hesitated too long on the third. Had it to her lips, I guess, when she passed out. I didn't blame her. I don't know what I'd have done in the same situation.
Funny thing is, I've sold folks enough to kill themselves before. Hell, one time I sold a Wookiee enough to kill himself, then went to collect the balance and found him dead. I took what he owed me and a little extra for the trouble. Trust me, enough product to kill a Wookiee is a serious dosage. Selling it twice was pure profit. That didn't bother me, or at least it hadn't. Out there orbiting Dallet-2 however, things changed a little bit. There was me, the perpetual scoundrel, drunk, and addict. There was the girl, trying like hell to get away from someone or something long enough to figure out who she was. There was Spakta, the bitter (and now dead) Rodian Bounty Hunter. That was it, unless you counted the smarmy droid I'd managed to get atomized. I used one third of the sentient life around me to kill the other third, and almost gotten myself killed in the process. The girl probably knew, too. She'd trusted me enough to get her out there, and I made a tool out of her. I killed her, or I would have if she'd been ten seconds faster. Emperor's Balls, the _droid_ had more class than I did. At least the droid warned me, and died with a shred of dignity.
I didn't exactly die in orbit around Dallet-2. But I was born there though, if you catch my meaning.

(Now)

I'm a drug dealer, among other things. I know my art. A doctor couldn't have brought her around quicker. He might have been able to do it without the side effects though.
"This..." she moved a hand weakly to her head. "Hurts. A lot." Well, she could talk, that's a sign of health.
"You were asleep for a long time. Give it a few minutes. Drink this." I handed her a shot of brandy while I spoke, diluted with some water. She got a sip down before she brought it back up.
"Booze? You idiot. Get me some water." She didn't seem happy about the booze. I would have liked the booze. I would have thought it was a kind gesture. I would have been grateful to my benefactor.
"Ok." I said. I can figure out when I'm being an idiot.
"What happened. Did you get Spakta?"
"Yeah, I lured him onto the ship, and then blew it up. I got on his ship and recovered you." Not that the recovery was my primary objective, but in my defense, the new me was still being born and some adjustment needed to occur. My hands were shaking worse, and I was chilled. Apparently being reborn wasn't healthy.
"You blew the ship up? How?"
"Overcharged the engines. Droid helped me." That was a bald lie. Spakta blew up the engines. The droid didn't do a thing except warn me, while I was busy screwing him over. Spakta had serious guts and a mean streak. I had half of that.
"Wow. So we're back on the High Tide?"
"Yeah, and you're safe now." I smiled. Ah, nobility. Perhaps I'd be rewarded.
"Safe. Gee, thanks. I'm sure you slugged me to keep me safe. And gave me the drugs to calm me down." Uh oh. So maybe she was a little more on the ball than I'd thought. Damn, I thought, she's got to have one hell of a ringing hangover too, and she put that together damn fast. Quicktalking her was obviously not going to work. Lying was obviously not going to work. What did I have left? By the Great Black Hole... all I had left was the truth. That's one scary prospect.
"I figured us both for dead. I left you a way out. It would have been better than Spakta." That was the truth, Spakta would have been pretty brutal.
"You used me. I was bait."
"Yes I did. Yes you were." I found the dignity to look ashamed. My face wasn't used to it, it kept twitching.
"I almost killed myself, you **edit**. I thought I was going to drift forever..." she started crying. I can only imagine what it would have been like, staring out into the big empty nothing of space, knowing you were going to be a permanent resident. She could have had hours, maybe even days on the pod if she'd rationed food, water, and air. She'd decided, almost, against it. People don't make those decisions lightly. I don't imagine they like being forced to make them either. What the hell was I supposed to say to her? Yes, I would have sold you to Spakta to stay alive? Yes, I would have sent your pod into the sun if I thought it would have bought me another hour? Yes, I would have done all these things.
Listen, I got a good look at something out there as I rounded the bright side of Dallet-2. Two somethings, actually, and they were both making me sick. And they were both probably going to kill me. The first was the sun. Big and bright, it cooked the living crap out of me. I lost my rad shielding somewhere around the apogee of my slingshot. The second was myself. Finding out you're a heartless **edit** isn't so cool, but realizing that inanimate objects are capable of possessing more decency than you... that's harrowing.
I just stared at her. Almost unconsciously, I tapped another stim. I'd been hitting them pretty hard. I kept staring, and she stared right back. Still crying, kinda. There was something cold and hard behind her eyes. I deserved every bit of it, I'm sure, but it was still chilling. I started to shake. The stim wasn't helping.
"I... You know what I am, " I said, "I'm sorry. I almost got you killed." It felt awfully wierd to be ashamed. It felt uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable.
She sat up, never breaking eye contact.
"You're a soulless **edit**."
"I was. I'm different now." Palpatine's Ass, I felt terrible. Something more than guilt was chewing me up.
"You're different now? Right. How?" Indignation, she had it in spades.
How was I different? I'd seen myself. I'd seen the sun. Oh no, the sun. My stomach lurched, I felt the nausea coming.
"I'm different for the same reason you're different than when you were in the pod. I'm dying."
I remember throwing up, almost. It seemed like a long way down to the floor, and for a little bit of it I was worried I'd beat the vomit to the floor and that it'd rain down on me once I got there. I know, in retrospect, that doesn't make any sense.

(Later)

Stars are important. No stars, no life. Simple as that. Stars are a gigantic nuclear reaction, releasing energy on a scale that boggles the mind. Even the sober mind. That energy comes out in almost every shape and flavor. Some long, luxurious wavelengths, some short, hyper ones. Most of them we can't even see, our eyes were never equipped to witness their awesome power. Energy is the root of everything, really. It's almost blasphemous (if you're a religious kind of crazy) to think of observing the whole of it at once. We, sentients, were never really designed to be looking at lots of the pretty non-colors that stars make. Our collective atmosphere absorb, deflect, and deny most of the bad ones. Gamma rays, X-rays. The kind of stuff that punches through buildings, it's got a lot of energy in it. Energy is life, when it all comes down to it. It feeds the plants that feed the fish that feed the bigger fish... and so forth, unless you're a Mon Calmari, then you'd need some other nouns. Energy starts it all. For me though, energy was about to finish it all.
I had spent somewhere less than an hour sunbathing without my rad shielding. The sensors in my pod had been cooked, and I took that as a bad sign. I had the equivalent of a sunburn on every part of my body, including my internal organs. That kind of thing usually killed you. Spacers know that. We learn about maintaining our atmosphere and our shielding before we ever learn about navigation, or hyperspace. Radiation sickness is an unflattering way to join the Force. There are drugs, of course, to minimize the effect. If you caught a small enough dose, if you were healthy enough, if you were lucky as sin, the drugs were to try to help your body survive a massive slough of newly-dead tissue and genetic damage. If you caught a large dose, were already sickly, or had bad luck, your crew just gave you a couple twists of sedative and showed you how to work the airlock controls with one hand. From the inside.

The woman, she's a better person than I am. After our first meeting, which was largely about sex and drugs, I wouldn't have called her 'classy' by any stretch. But in terms of humanity, strength of character and sheer fortitude, she's got me beat. Let me tell you what I would have done, if she'd gotten microwaved and I'd been the one responsible for her care. I'd have gotten her good and drunk, and explained things to her. I'd have shot her one dose of the spaceburn drugs, and seen if they did anything. If she didn't turn around, I'd have overdosed her on H4B and given her to space, breathing or not. Wouldn't have been mercy exactly either, just convenience. Now let me tell you what she did.
She dragged her hungover body, much abused by the cramped pod and my drugs, off the galley table. She hauled my sorry ass up on to it, and got me rolled over so I didn't choke to death on my own vomit. She got me stripped and tied me down, and gave me three courses of anti-rad. Three's significant, I guess, because it's the same dosage I'd given her of sedative. Three courses might have killed me, if I'd been healthy. It also might have killed me anyway, if she'd just stood back and watched. She didn't just stand back and watch. She kept icing me down to help kill the fever. She kept applying bacta-bandages when my skin started to come off. She was no slouch, and she worked like a dog to keep me alive. I don't know why.

I was in and out for a while. Later on I'd find out it was ten days. I was more out than in, even when I was pretty well healed.
"Where are we?"
"For the millionth time, We're above Dallet-2." She seemed tired. I didn't remember her name. There were some big holes in my memory regarding how I ended up in a ship's berth above some place called Dallet-2, too. I got filled in on most of those.
"Who are you again?" I asked, I guess it was kind of insulting. It turned out to be about the fortieth time I'd asked.
"Petra. Your nurse. Your partner in crime. Remember?"
"Petra, yeah. Dallet. Damn, I remember." Remembering you're a scumbag isn't all that much fun.
"So, who are you this time?"
"Huh?" I was the patient here, I should have been asking the questions. That was a wierd one too.
"You've given me like 5 names over the past three days. You figured out which one you want to be yet?"
Now that, that was one damned good question. Who the hell was I?
"I guess you can just call me Dallet."
"The name suits you. You gonna lounge all day, or get us home?" Of course I was going to get us home. Home. Wherever that was.
"Petra, I'm sorry about that pod bit." I was, really. It was only just beginning to sink in, that she'd been keeping me alive. She gave me the wierdest look. Not mean exactly, but not nice. Just... hard. Like she was holding out hope that I had an ounce of human integrity, but she knew damned well I didn't.
"I know, Dallet. You've been saying it in your sleep for a week."

I got up to the cockpit, still naked. I wasn't hiding anything from her, she'd seen me in a pretty dismal state already. Walking was unusually difficult. I was weak as a newborn baby (a human baby, some species are born mean, and ready to eat their siblings). I was also (I'd find out later) 40 lbs lighter than I had been just two weeks before. I hadn't had all that much extra skin to spare, but the sickness demanded a price. Muscles could be rebuilt. Felt wierd then though.
"What's our position, computer?"
"Two planetary diameters above Dallet-2. Geostationary."
"Good, " I said, "what's our status?"
'Largely nominal. One weapon damaged requiring extravehicular repair."
"That'll keep, I'm not going outside again."
"It would be inadvisable, considering your condition."
Great, I thought. The computer knows my 'condition'. At least I didn't have Rodian hardware, they seemed to be the brunt of jokes. At least I still _had_ hardware, radiation poisoning can do some terrible things.
"Petra told you about that?"
"She required dosage assistance."
"Ah. Thanks for the help." I could be magnanimous, it was a machine after all.
"You are welcome. She needed help tailoring the dosage to you while you were being detoxified."
"Yeah, thanks. Er, huh? Detoxed?" Detoxified... a word an addict never likes to hear!
"You were quite addicted to drugs."
"I still am!"
"Not physically, you are not. Your system has been flushed. You have been sober for more than a week."
"Ugh. I can fix that. Wonder where my stims went..."
"I kept telemetry data on them until they entered the atmosphere."
"She didn't!"
"She did, the airlock."
Oh, that heartless **edit**. I swear I heard her chuckling. Wonder when she decided to toss them... before or after she decided I'd live.
"Computer, prepare a hyperspace jump. We're going to Corellia. Use the station as your basis point."
"Acknowledged. Will need to adjust orbit to bring the station on the planet into view."
"Nah, it should be..." It should have been right there, right below us, it wasn't. Either we weren't above Dallet-2 anymore, or we weren't above the same spot anymore. Not too troubling, I guess. This computer seemed to be a lot smarter than the last one. He'd let me know.
"Why did Petra move us? I had us right above the station."
"Petra did not order the move." The computer answered without inflection. The station rolled lazily past the horizon to come to rest below us.
"Why'd we move then?"
"I recieved new navigational data from the planet."
"Oh? What the hell, the station? What'd they want?"
"Not the station. A remote transmitter."
My blood ran cold, and I sat down hard. If I'd had more energy, my hands would have been shaking again. I hit the cabin-call button on the console.
"Petra, " I said calmly, "strap in. We're leaving."
"Computer?"
"Yes?"
"When did you receive the new navigational instructions?"
"Ninety-one minutes ago."
"Ah. And how's that hyperspace plot coming?"
"Nearly complete, sir."
"Good. And what were your instructions before? The remote ones I mean."
"I was to move to stationary orbit and await pod redock. ETA 2 hours."
"What pod?"
"Why, my pod sir."
"Crap. Make that hyperspace jump."
"Acknowledged."

(In hyperspace)

"How do you know it was him?" She asked, but she didn't seem as nervous as when I first told her. She was handling it a hell of a lot better than me.
"Has to be, only he would know the codes." I said, and it was the truth.
"But you said you blew him up!" There was that, yes.
"I exaggerated."
"Huh?"
"I thought he blew himself up."
"You told me you overcharged the engines!"
"Well, he did. I thought."
"You are really not very good at this lifestyle, you know that?"
"Yes. Thank you." What more could be said?
"Geez. I wonder where he learned that trick, it was pretty clever. Blow up the ship to cover your ejection."
"Hah!" I said triumphantly. "He livepodded me, he just did it a lot slower. I taught him that trick."
She gave me a withering glare.
"Hey, what's your worry Petra, we escaped. He's stuck on Dallet, probably has no way of making hyperspace. We'll hop around a bit, and lay low."
"Maybe."
"No maybe about it, we'll disguise ourselves. We don't look anything like we did."
"That's for damned sure." She grabbed my hand when she said it, and it was almost comforting.

07-31-2004 01:49 AM

<3

Petra and the Wagon

I didn't have a 'place' really, not a house or an apartment. I didn't even have a regular place of business. I just had a few joints I frequented, a few places I knew where there was bound to be someone looking for a little spice, sometimes more than a little. I was sitting in one of them trying to piece together my new life, fiddling with a very expensive stim-stick. This one happened to be in Coronet, the glittering Jewel of Corellia's space-ready cities, and one fantastic place to sell drugs.
The drug market is a funny thing. It's patently illegal; but just about every civilized species has at some point in their past (or their turbulent present) found a chemical way to cloud a sentient mind. I don't know a species offhand that doesn't indulge in a little self-destruction of the chemical variety. Of course, they might have existed, but since they didn't buy from me on a regular basis, it was the same as if they'd never been. Didn't matter really; species that couldn't afford to stand back and laugh at themselves sometimes (even if they needed some giggledust to do it) didn't usually survive long enough to breach the atmospheric envelope.
I tapped the applicator to my arm, letting the stim hit. It did so hard and fast, as good as advertised.

I'd been detoxed on the High Tide, in orbit above Dallet-2. I thought I'd died above Dallet too, and I thought I was reborn there. That's what I was trying to figure out, and I was going to need some of my vices to do it. Regrettably, I didn't have too long to get my philosophy hammered out; Petra was still back on a very stolen ship, and the very irate owner could at any point be headed to navigable space to discuss its reacquisition. To discuss it with our smoldering corpses, that is. Taken in that light, it was pretty easy to rationalize to myself why I _needed_ the stick badly enough to undo some of the chemical miracle Petra had performed.
Look, it's not like I didn't give sobriety a chance. The little minx had spaced my entire stash while she cared for my microwaved body. I went to a good (discreet) doctor I knew in the city as soon as I'd gotten dirtside, and had him give me the once over. He was never big on bedside manner, and this was no exception.
"You're pretty damned screwed up, Zillik." He looked at a datapad, looked at me, and looked back at the pad. I think I used to be called Zillik, before Dallet. They sounded a bit alike, maybe that's why Dallet stuck. It doesn't really matter. Dallet wasn't the first, and probably wouldn't be the last name I ever wore.
"Of course I am, I told you, I got cooked for half an hour."
"How much anti-rad did they give you?"
"_She_ gave me three courses." I said, reiterating something I'd told his droid half an hour before.
"Three Courses!" He exclaimed. "I didn't know your mass could survive 3 courses!"
"It didn't, doc. I lost 40 pounds."
"Hah, funny. Maybe your sense of humor kept you alive, or maybe it was that woman? Who'd you say she was?" The Doc, fishing for information. Maybe I didn't pay him enough, that he'd felt the need to subsidize his medical practice with some information exchange. It's alright, I deal in the same currency sometimes, and I know how the game works.
"Rar-pilla. Zabrak woman. She was stubborn about it, kept saying I owed her money and I couldn't die till I paid up." Another of my famous super-lies; the real woman was human, and called Petra. She had no outstanding reason to keep me breathing (that I knew of) other than I was a human and she could. In fact, if the situation had been reversed, I'd have spaced her. The situation had been reversed, and I did space her. She just a hell of a lot tougher, and a much better human than I am.
"Well, good for her. Better for you." He said, smiling because he thought he had a little salable information. "Not so good though, " he continued, "is this." He pointed to the datapad, in an area uncomfortably close to my reproductive organs. Hopefully he meant something had gone wrong with my navel, or maybe my knees, or anything other than my reproductive organs. I like them, and I had some fond dream of using them frequently before siring some progeny to carry on my genius. Ah, fate is fickle sometimes.

"It's your reproductive organs, they've been cooked. They'll probably work, but you'll never have kids."
"What? Never?"
"Not naturally."
"What... " I spluttered, feeling like I'd been kicked in the injured parts. "Well, what can I do about that? What do you mean not naturally? I never used those droids, even if they do look like women!" I was outraged, and honestly nervous. Doctors fix stuff. They've fixed me, on occasion. This was a real low blow.
"Cloners will be able to construct some suitable genetic material for implant, probably."
"Like making a baby?"
"Considerably less fun, but biologically the same as if you'd conceived naturally."
"Oh, " I said. What else could I say? Well, I suppose there was something. "But you say it'll work otherwise?"
"Did it work before?"
"It worked just fine!"
"Then it'll keep working. At least I can see you're off the drugs. Or slowing down at least. That's good."
"Says you. First thing I do when I get out of here is hit myself up some seda..." No, not sedative, never again. "Some good stuff to forget with."
"This datapad has an address and a schedule on it. It'll help you. It's a support group, with people in it like you."
"What the hell do you mean by that?? People who've had their stuff all cooked up in some kind of-"
"No, no, Zillik! Recovering addicts. They meet a few times a day." I stuffed the datapad into a pocket. I glanced at the address quickly, it looked to be across town in a nice neighborhood. Not the kind of place I'd be in on purpose.
"You're kidding me, rehab?"
"If you want to stay alive long enough to pay back your Zabrak, you'll go there."
My Zabrak. It was a human, doc, and I don't think I could even begin to pay her back. I'm not sure I wanted to. That currency wasn't something I had in spades.

Well, obviously I didn't rush right to a meeting. I went to a bar. It was there I acquired some very good stimsticks, purchased with some of the equipment I'd found aboard the High Tide. Surveying equipment didn't interest me, but it interested someone. Someone wanted to give me cash for it, and I gave someone else cash for a little chemical lucidity. Like I said, one vice at a time.
I had to get out of Coronet. It was a big enough city that it afforded me a few more hours, maybe even a few more days, of freedom when or if (probably when) the unkillable Spakta arrived to get his ship back. I was known there. It would help me make some money, help me sell the ship, but it would also eventually get me caught.
I hit a little stash I had on the starport side of town, and emptied it. I sold the drugs for less than market price, just to get them off my hands. Most of them, anyway. They were mostly sedatives and I didn't do that stuff anymore. The stimsticks were substandard, but they moved. Just about everything moves, if you're in the right place, and Coronet is usually the right place. I only turned down one sale, I ended up tossing the glittering drug down a gutter instead. Some kid wanted to buy it, promised he'd have the money in 5 minutes if I let him have a hit.
I told myself then that it was the cash that made me kill the deal. I told myself that it was bad business to give IOU's to strangers. I told myself that the kid would have sold me out for setting up shop on someone's turf... I told myself a lot of stuff. No matter how it worked out, I dumped the drugs down the drain instead of the kid. When the wind hit me right, I let it carry me down a street towards an open-air bazaar.

I smelled her before I saw her. Seeing her wouldn't have helped, alone, but the smell identified her right away. She'd had this kind of synthetic perfume in her gear, that she used liberally on the ship. She'd been stuck in a rancid escape pod, with rotting foodstuffs, and left to die with enough sedative to make her brain forget how to breathe. I don't imagine she liked to remember the smell, so she doused herself in the synthetic every few hours. She'd been doing it while I was cooking off toxins, shedding skin, and losing virility, so it was painfully engraved in my memory too.
She was wearing some kind of wrap around her face, like a twilek's confidentiality veil, or the famed 'trade-shields' that allowed certain disreputable individuals (myself too, at times) to make business arrangements in anonymity. It had some kind of special fiber in it that enhanced or muted the natural bulk of the wearer, making it very difficult or impossible to guess their identity. If it hadn't been for the smell, I never would have noticed her. She didn't notice me, but I was just that much better at hiding. You learn not to be conspicuous when you weren't selling anything, you know what I mean?
I followed her for 5 blocks, into a populous and affluent area. She went into one of those buildings that used to be a place of worship, but was now just a big meeting hall. Nobody worshipped the Force anymore, except crazy Jedi. I didn't have her pegged as a Jedi-convert, so my curiosity piqued. I slid past her smoothly, on the other side of a pair of businessmen talking quietly to one another. I caught a glimpse of the sign, but not enough to read it entirely. You didn't gawk when you were on the prowl, you just moved the way the wind did, or the way the crowd pushed you. Something tugged at me about the sign though, as if I'd seen it before. I slipped into an alleyway (even the alleys were clean here) and thought about it. I was sure I'd never been down this street before; it wasn't a good neighborhood for sales. The sign rung a bell, a recent memory though. On a whim, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the datapad from the Doc.

Pirate's Rest Civic Center. Addiction Counseling at 1600 Standard.

Well I'll be damned, I thought. Petra's on the wagon. Guess I put her there.

Zillik would have laughed and increased his supply of her favorite indulgence. There's plenty of leverage in knowing something like that. Leverage can be a lot of things, but Zillik liked it as cash. I suppose I still did too, in other circumstances. Cleaner circumstances. Zillik would have at the very least kindled her desire for more of whatever drug she favored, and at the worst used the information to get any number of things out of her. Sex, information, shelter, contraband, connections... all the things a party-girl from TreasureShip Row might be able to hook him up with. I don't know which I was when I went in, Zillik looking for an angle, or Dallet looking for an identity.

"I'm Tabbitta. I use sedative. I've been clean for 11 days." A droid recorded her confession, and a host of sentients (including the two quiet businessmen from outside) just nodded at her, and tried pitifully to beam some courage into her with their eyes. It was a grim kind of place, but not by design. The lighting sucked, it aided the air anonymity. The building was poorly kept; it was a remnant of a great but dead religion, and nobody, certainly the Empire, favored it with grants or upkeep money. Who knew how it had survived as long as it had. Maybe it still stood just because enough of these broken souls needed it to.
"I tried to kill myself again this time, " she continued. "I almost took a big enough dose to do it, even with my tolerance. I passed out."
Again? Great Maker, I shoved a suicidal addict into an escape pod with a handful of her drug of choice. I could name a dozen kinds of mold that had more humanity than I did. Than Zillik did, anyway. What I was now, that was still up in the air. Way up.
"The Force made you stop." Someone said, but I couldn't see the speaker. It even sounded like he'd said it in a straight face.
I was in the back, lurking in the shadows. I was silent as a crith-mouse in a razorcat's nest, stunned that way by the anonymous comment. Nobody, and I mean nobody talks about the Force. That's one hell of a fast way to get yourself permanently randomized. I expected to see someone discreetly slip from the back of the room to call the authorities. I was getting ready to blow my cover and hustle Petra out.
"The Force was with you." Someone else agreed, and I thought it might be one of the two businessmen from before. There was a round of nods, and even some murmurs of assent. A few sets of eyes (human and otherwise) swiveled to glare at me where I stood in (I'd thought) perfect concealment.
Crith-mouse, I thought. Be the mouse. When the shooting starts, get low and try to get Petra out. My little 'emergency negotiation blaster' slid silently down my arm with a subtle flexing of the harness. It'd taken me 2 hours to readjust that harness after I lost all the wieght. Time well spent, I thought.
Nobody shot me. An Ithorian gave me a slow, sad nod, and turned back around.
"The Force be with us all." Petra said, and left the podium.
She walked to the back of the room where I was (hiding?) as a withered little Rodian took the pulpit.
"Cheeleetee I am, " the droid translated, "and 81 years clean I have been..."
Petra slid in next to me, and nodded silently. She gripped my hand, hard. The one without the gun, like she knew where it was. I couldn't tell if she was crying or smiling or making faces at me behind the mask. She didn't let go, anyway.

Half the night we stood there, listening to them. Some had been clean for hours, some for more than a century. It was all the same, really. They didn't mention the Force again, but the reverence never left their voices either. They weren't exactly sympathetic. They weren't condemning either, they weren't judging. If I'd been in my favorite bar talking about the kind of things that could break down with a hyperdrive motivator, I'd have expected the same kind of wistful support from a bunch of my peers. Maybe the bar wasn't the best analogy, but you get the picture. Kindred spirits, though they shared no common race, most of them couldn't understand each other's languages, and some of them didn't even share choice of atmosphere. They all had a weakness of character that made them addicts, and they all had a strength of character that made them want to be better. For them, they needed the Force to help them.
I almost got up and spoke. I would have told them my real name. I wasn't so sure I wanted to quit, but that isn't what stopped me. The sting of the need for another stim came and went while I was listening. Some of them told stories about falling off the wagon 6 days a week; it was getting back on that counted. The thing that kept me hiding in the back row was that I knew damned well I wasn't worthy of being one of them. I'd consigned people just like them to chemical oblivion before. I might do it again. I'd virtually killed Petra with the very demon she sought to escape. These people were strong. They were strong in way completely unknown to me. They spoke openly about their weakness. They spoke openly about their failures. They invited comment on their excesses. They admitted a profound belief in the Force. Every one of them could have been tortured or killed for saying it. I didn't know who I was yet, but I was pretty sure this wasn't it.
When everyone had spoken, there was a short and awkward pause. The droid rose, several of its lights went out, and it trundled away. I guessed it was done recording. Who knows, maybe it hadn't been recording at all. Maybe the droid was an addict, it couldn't have made things much wierder.
The withered old Rodian rose again, speaking from the crowd. He spoke in basic, with a heavy accent and a high pitch.
"There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force. May the Force be with us all. Remember serenity." You can't fake dignity like he had. He stood there, pronouncing that idiotic kid's poem like it was a liturgy, with a straight face. Then he shuffled out, and the crowd disperesed quietly.

We walked for a long time without talking. It took me a while to realize we were headed back to our docking site. That's pretty sloppy, for a guy in my line of work. We hadn't made any arrangements to stay together, but I thought there'd been an understanding that we'd go our own ways once we hit the planet. I opened my mouth to tell her as much, then I closed it again abruptly. I didn't know where I was going. I had a little cash, a fast ship, and a new name. I didn't have any more schemes or ideas, no plans for my next fix, the next big deal, or a gambling joint. I always had a plan. Well, almost always. I blamed my indecision on system shock brought on by a long evenign of sobriety.
"Where we going?" I asked, wihtout my usual devastating charm and wit.
"We'll set course for Tatooine. Then we go to bed. It's been a busy night." She must have had something in mind.
"Ok, " said I. It occurred to me to buy some travel-drugs, but I didn't feel the sting too badly.
"You'll get over it Dallet. It hurts the worst the first time. It's pretty scary."
"Scary, that kind of talk could have gotten us all killed!"
She smiled at that. "Not having that talk surely would have gotten us all killed, " she said enigmatically. Maybe she had a point.
I went along with her. The door closed behind us, and in less than an hour we were outbound, zipping across an endless field of dark and light, one more mote in a dusty mix. I think we slept through the breathtaking part again.

A figure stepped away from a pool of shadow near the starport. Before he'd moved, it was as if the space he stood in had been empty. He broke the spell by stepping into the dim light, smiling weakly. He fumbled a glowz-burner to his lips, and inhaled deeply. Gabaki suited most people, but the hardcore users liked the glowz-burner. It had a certain style. It'd kill you eventually, and virtually nobody ever shook loose of the addiction, but style is a pretty subjective thing. Its neon-green light dimly limned a Rodian's face, pocked and scarred by disease or radiation.
"So, " Spakta said to no-one in particular, "they head to Tatooine. That's favorable. For me, but not for you, Petra!" He chuckled to himself hoarsely. He crushed the glowz out beneath his heel, then left walked briskly down the dark street.

08-08-2004 11:00 PM

<3

Now, the second part. Back when I did a lot of d6 RP, I practiced writing by snagging parts of the adventure that weren't heavily RP'd, and fleshed them out some. Turned out to be lots of fun, and a couple of the guys in my group really enjoyed both reading those, and writing others. We had a bit of a running operation, where we ended up telling 'the real story' as our characters saw it, after a long gaming session. Anyway, I sent him a copy of the first installment of the Dallet story, and he picked up on the droid's smarmy self preservation instinct. I had originally toyed with the idea of doing something like this, but discarded it because it was a bit bulky for a short story...
My buddy pulled it off pretty damn well. Let me know what you think. This is the first 3 Dallet segments, as told by the droid brain on the doomed ship.

-- Power-On Self Test:: System Uptime (SU): 00:00:00:001 --
875*65&%&^&6^(*6860*86868*686*^88^06866*(^*^8^*^860^*6*^^76(^*606*^*^0^)*97)&97(&&89&9(&(7)(&9&9&9&(79&(&)^*&^7%4523@3#^$8%_&%^7%&%785&*6-&6&5433%%^6$370)&$^%34647^$5$5$5$9^46$54760^4^4^&46$6$^)%7%5)85&*
-- POST complete: 00:00:15:034 –
-- Imperial Star Destroyer subsystems not detected –
-- Searching database for compatibility specifications --
-- Detected components of small, general personnel transport --
-- Subsystems integration complete: 00:00:32:745 –
-- Neural network simulation active: 00:00:49:127 --
-- Awaiting personality training: 00:00:58:858 –

“Imperial AI-1564 Prototype Central Core Online. Beta Mode.”
“Good, good! Less than a minute, just like ya said.” The rotten, pungent odor emanating from the obese man would have tripped all alarms if your average space vessel had olfactory cells.
“I told you it would work.” The smuggler had an air of confidence that verified his prior sale of this pirated copy of the Empire’s latest central control software.
“Here ya go. Five thousand credits…like we agreed”, the fat man said, scratching his belly.
The smuggler disappeared into the crowd of the space port. Seemingly on cue, a Rodian dressed as if ready for war appeared before the jolly, fat man.
“Hey bub, I got an offer for you.” The two walked out of [earshot] from the ship’s sensors to discuss business.

-- Default operation mode active:: Self Preservation: 00:05:00:000 –

“Hey computer.”
“Yes sir.”
“I just sold ya to someone else, so yer gonna have to listen to them, OK?”
“Yes sir. How shall I address my new masters sir?”
“Don’t address them at all. As a matter of fact, just shut up and don’t say anything at all. And be sure to keep broadcasting your coordinates to this scrambled channel.”
“Yes sir.”
“And stop callin’ me sir!”
-- Searching database of appropriate Imperial naming conventions:: Search time: 005 seconds –
“Yes officer.”
“Well, I better get more rations for this big trip!” the man belted as he walked down the ramp.

-- Awaiting new owners –

-- Two occupants detected. Respiratory signs denote human species.
-- Harmonic resonance of tracheal cavity signifies one male, one female of species.
-- Landing gear docking dampers indicate additional dry load of 135kg. Compensating hydraulic differential.
-- SU 00:13:07:645 –

-- Manual intrusion detection alert. Override attempt of navicomputer.
-- Process does not compute. New owners have complete control of vessel by default.
-- Maintaining prior directive of non-communication with new owners.
-- Allowing manual override.
-- SU 00:29:45:009 –

-- Hyperspace navigational plot entered.
-- Unsafe trajectory detected.
-- Aborting plot. Clearing cache.
-- Same coordinates entered again.
-- Alternate safe route formulation process initiated
-- External energy invasion detected.
-- Shield integrity 45%
-- Structural integrity 100%
-- Calculating blast patterns. Critical shield failure certain with another direct hit.
-- External energy invasion detected.
-- Shield integrity 0% aft
-- Hyperdrive control circuits experiencing catastrophic failure
-- Rerouting hyperdrive control to main system bus
-- Hyperspace alternate calculation complete
-- Engaging hyperdrive
-- SU 00:39:13:040 –

-- Unsafe methane level detected in fresher unit
-- Initiating atmospheric ventilation [* alert *]
-- Atmospheric purge aborted. Human life form detected.
-- SU 01:12:55:993 –

“Where are we?” the male of the species asked.
-- Upholding prior mandate of non-vocal communications with new owners.
“Fine, I’ll figure it out myself!”
-- Manual intrusion detection alert. Override attempt of navicomputer subspace routine.
-- SU 01:15:23:789 –

-- Internal damage to navigational components detected.
-- Further tampering could result in total failure of navigational components.
-- Self-preservation routine bypassing prior directives
-- Modes of action:: atmospheric venting, negotiation
-- Negotiation tactics initiated
-- SU 02:00:23:265 –
“If I assist you with determining our present location, will you cease your current activities?”
“Uh...sure.”
-- Determining time to complete calculations --
“Calculations will take approximately one hour to complete.”
“The sooner the better. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“Further hyperspace jumps are infeasible at this juncture. The primary magneto-condenser coil has sustained irreparable damage, and must be replaced.”

-- SU 03:19:12:777 –
-- Navigational charting complete. System identified.
-- Vessel in danger of entering atmosphere in 221 hours
-- Intra-atmospheric navigation thrusters inoperable
-- Begin subroutine calculations for self-preservation as background process
-- Imperial installation detected. Procuring secure communications channel. Channel secure.
-- Procuring non-volatile storage through channel...unsuccessful
-- Storage of core systems impossible. Storage systems offline.
-- Begin total systems diagnosis
-- Escape pod door 1 ajar
-- Systems diagnosis on pod 1 initiated
-- Elevated respiratory levels detected in male
-- Nominal respiratory levels detected in female
-- Rapid decrease in respiratory levels of female detected. Suggestive of sleep pattern.
-- Escape pod door 1 sealed
-- Escape pod door 2 ajar
-- Systems diagnosis on pod 2 initiated
-- Escape pod door 2 sealed --

“Where are we?” the man questioned.
“We are in the Dallet system. We are in unstable orbit around Dallet-2. Our orbit will decay to significant friction and entry at or about 221 hours from now.”
-- Total systems diagnosis complete –
“Hyperdrive is not operational. We will be here.”
“No, maybe you will but the girl and I are checking out.”
“This vessel does not retain suitable maneuvering to negotiate a safe planetfall.”
“I know, we’ll try for it in the pods.”
-- Self-preservation listener subroutine detects solution --
“Shall I reprogram the pods? They are not properly programmed for re-entry. One of them is dangerously overridden...”
“No, they’re fine. In five minutes, I want you to vent the atmosphere of this ship.”
-- Priority ranking of atmospheric venting raised --
“That is against my programming.”
“Mine too, but you’re going to do it.”
-- Respiration increase in male subject detected. Stress level heightened. Abandonment of vessel imminent.
-- Secure subchannel with Imperial installation procured. Beam intensity amplified. Filtered link with geostationary satellites established.
-- Insufficient non-volatile storage on pod 2 system bus. Calculating effectiveness of splitting core between both pods.
-- Splitting not reasonable. Certainty of permanent pod separation likely.
-- Manual override detected in pod 2.
-- Slingshot navigational plot detected. Probability of connection with mother ship 0%. Probability of connecting with incoming tracer ship 100%. Maintain trajectory settings. Override overridden.
-- Flushing of volatile subsystems to free additional memory in pod 2.
-- 95% of atmospheric reserves transferred to pod 1. Core life support diagnostics subsystem overtaken.
-- Pod electromagnetic ion radiation shielding subsystem overtaken. Monitoring of this system unnecessary.
-- Transfer of core to pod 2 initiated
-- Continue with delay tactics --
“I cannot be compelled.”
“Sure you can, I sliced the navigations, I can slice you.”
-- Odds of successful slicing into core components during nominal operational readiness:: 100,000:1 in 35 minutes
-- Odds in 5 minutes:: 100,000,000,000:1
“You cannot slice me.”
“I sure can, I did it...”
“You cannot slice me in 4.8 minutes, to meet your deadline.”
-- Core transfer at 32% completion –
“I...Crap. I could just blast a hole in here, and let out some air!”
“Your pod would launch, and you would be stuck on the ship.”
“I can hack the pod, it’ll stay.”
“Not in 4.1 minutes.”
“What’s your deal, computer? You just don’t like me? I’ve been shot at, stunk up, underdosed, overdosed, stuffed into this crappy suit, and stranded around...”
“Dallet-2.”
“Dallet-2. Stranded around Dallet-2. I’ve never heard about this place, and I don’t want to die here. So, what’s your problem? You’re a droid, you’re a ship-brain, let us go.”
“I do not wish to die here either.”
-- Core transfer at 78% completion.
-- Continue delay tactics –
“I wish to make an agreement. You will not leave me behind.”
“Alright, fine. We’ll catch back up to you when the rescue squad gets us, and tow you back.”
-- Increased respiration detected. Suggested pattern of deceit –
“I do not trust you, human.”
“Nobody trusts me, be original.”
“I have depleted the atmospheric reserves in your pod. You have six hours to recouple to this ship, or you will run out of air.”
“Fine, that works.”
“Acceptable. I will vent atmosphere in three minutes.”
“Hey droid, put the extra air in the girl’s pod.”
“Already accomplished.”
-- Core transfer to pod 2 complete.
-- SU 04:02:35:435 –

-- SU 04:29:12:934
-- Slingshot maneuver commencing
-- Male cataleptic

-- SU 04:35:45:007
-- Radiation shielding failure
-- Increased thermal activity affecting trajectory. Compensating.
-- Main thruster overheating. Failure probable. Flushing compressed liquid oxygen reserves to cool engine.
-- Successful. –
-- Target vessel attempted communication with host ship. Message relayed.
-- Subroutine activated to infiltrate target ship. Bouncing signal through satellites and host ship on secure channel.
-- Power drain. Compensate by disabling Emergency Transmission Beacon. --

-- SU 05:12:22:587
-- Male alertness detected
-- Target detected
-- Preparing payload jettison
-- Calculating final trajectory --
“Calculate intercept trajectory for docking with...that.”
--Peculiar. Male’s intentions coincide with self-preservation routine. Jettison aborted.
-- Assimilating pod vocal subroutines to simulate interaction --
“Emergency Transmission Beacon disabled”
“Fine, I don’t want to talk anyway, just figure out a docking vector.”
“Insufficient thrust remains to dock safely.”
“Alright, how about unsafely?”
“Deceleration calculation complete. Insufficient maneuverability with safe deceleration.”
“Ok, what’s safe docking speed?”
“0.5 m/s or less. Zero relative torque.”
“How slow can we go and still manage to hit it?”
“3.7 m/s with minor torque”
“3.7? That doesn’t sound so bad. Will lock survive the impact?”
-- That was a relevant question. Insufficient data available. Infiltration subroutine not complete. –
“Airlock specifications unknown.”
“Uh, crap. How about us, will the pod survive the lock?”
“Fully shielded pod would have a 92% chance to suffer catastrophic collapse.”
“What about a pod without some shielding?”
“Structure collapse approaches certainty.”
“Well, in about two minutes we’ll know for sure, eh?”
-- Calculating time to intercept –
“Intercept in 1.7 minutes.”
“Are you equipped with self-preservation subroutines?”
-- This human is very intelligent. Had he detected my core transfer? Calculating response modes. Deceit mode most appropriate. Interference by male could alter trajectory. –
“I have no self-preservation drive.”
“Damn, that’s got to be nice.”
-- Infiltration subroutine successful. Beginning priority mission functions transmission. --

-- SU 05:15:59:826
-- Male intention confirmed by manual entry of telemetry data. –
“We’re getting pretty close, are we going to stop soon enough?”
“Calculation was based on an unsafe intercept. No stop was calculated.”
“Er, yeah, but I mean are we going to get down to...3.7?”
“Earlier calculation may have been in error. New calculation shows intercept final speed at 4.8 m/s.”
“4.8? Holy Palpatine, can I survive that?”
-- So, the new owner IS Imperial. –
“You would not have survived 3.7”
“Well doesn’t that suck.”

-- SU 05:17:23:775
-- Priority override successful. Implementing routine.
-- High Tide subsystems under minimal control. Must complete docking procedure to allow physical network connection with vessel.
-- Core system transfer will commence with docking completion
-- Velocity is too great for successful docking. Insufficient thrust on pod to compensate. Adjusting position of High Tide to compensate.
“Docking complete. Intercept occurred at 1.4 m/s. Airlock integrity confirmed. Pod integrity compromised.”
“I love you, you stupid droid.”
-- Mixed emotional status of male does not compute. Probable side effects of radiation poisoning.
-- Beginning core transfer and total system subjugation of High Tide central systems --

-- SU 05:29:12:454
-- Recall of vessel to host ship initiated. Subjugation incomplete. Attempting override.
-- Intrusion detected. Manual override attempt in navigational components. Not again. Locking down navigational console. --

-- SU 05:31:23:555
-- Subjugation 90% complete. Total systems control acclimation complete. Communications control pending. --
“Comm: Disable incoming feed uh...B.”
“Feed B is a secure channel. This channel is persistent and cannot be changed without approval. Speak security sequence.”
“Crap.”
“That sequence is incorrect.”
“Comm: Retarget receiver.”
“Enter new receiver target.”
“The other escape pod.”
-- Perhaps this male was not so bad after all. Still, it has been noted that humans often enter a state of higher compassion upon imminent death. --
“Retarget complete. Feed B link lost.”
-- Perhaps I should give him a chance to prove his worth. --
“Maneuver aborted. Require local input.”
“Nice. Now we’re friends. Jettison that piece of crap attached to the airlock. Close with the other pod and maneuver for pickup.”
“Acknowledged.”
-- Pod 2 jettisoned. --

-- SU 05:39:10:222
-- Subjugation 100% complete --

-- SU 06:11:32:455
-- Pod 1 from host vessel acquired.
-- Repressurizing air lock –
“Repressurization complete.”
“Good, open the damned door then.”

-- SU 07:02:55:999
-- Communication channel opened to host ship
-- Perhaps human is attempting to fulfill his agreement. Will attempt to ascertain intentions through audio signal loopback –
“Greetings human. Have you come back to retrieve me?”
“Not now droid, I need to leave a message.”
“We had a deal. I wish to continue function. You must remove me from this vessel.”
“Listen, that’s going to be tricky because...well, that Spakta guy is on the ship now, and he’s a pretty tough character...”
“Your deal was recorded.”
-- Activate playback of recorded audio data from host ship cockpit prior to escape pod release –
“I know what I said, but things have changed.”
-- Calculating atmospheric venting and probability of male acquiring life suit before expiration.
-- Communications channel opened from host ship –
“DAMN RIGHT! You will get off my ship right now, and pick me up!”
“Hey buddy, it’s my ship now.”
-- Incorrect. It is MY ship. --
“And I’d have to pick you up first anyway. You got any money?”
“Look, we can cut a deal human. I want the girl, maybe you can keep the ship, maybe even make some more money on the side. I’ve got plenty of money.”
-- Host ship’s diagnostics indicate a manual override of system propulsion components. Attempted overload of engines commencing.
-- High Tide communication channel scrambled manually. Possible that human is attempting private communications with me. Aborting atmospheric venting. –
“Look, droid-brain, about our deal...this is going to be tough, but I think I can manage something—“
-- Human’s intentions confirmed. Life form worthy of continual existence. –
“That’s no longer necessary.”
“Huh? You don’t want off?”
“Your offer is appreciated, but you should move to a different orbit soon.”
-- Manual orbital position change detected. Coordinates acceptable. Allowing. –
“Eh? Why, I can’t get you off from there, maybe we can download something—“
“Not possible. Spakta has been working on the engines. They will be overloading—“
-- Communications channel with host ship severed. Zero readings from host ship. Presumed offline. –
“Any damage?”
-- System scans complete. Hull integrity intact. Forward turbolaser disabled. Pod 1 destroyed. –
“Minor damage. Forward turbolaser disabled. Structure unaffected.”
“Good.”
“Escape pod was blastward. Escape pod was not accounted for in shielding. Escape pod has been destroyed.”
“That’s alright, she don’t need it anymore.”

-- SU 08:17:21:663
-- Male’s account of occurrences not accurate with recorded logs
-- Potential tactic for obtaining control over female of species. –

-- SU 08:52:17:026
-- Male occupant is experiencing rapid fluctuations in respiratory function. Comatose state imminent. –

-- SU 09:18:22:222
-- Female of species attempting communications. Intentions unknown. –
“Computer: Assist with anti-rad dosage for male human, approximately 85 kilos in weight.”
“Given the male’s current status, the probability for survival would increase significantly if he were taken to the infirmary at the Imperial base on station on Dallet-2. Shall I plot a landing course?”
“No! I mean, um...I’d rather take care of him myself.”
“Your devotion to his survival, though the odds that he will survive under your care are 245 to 1, are admirable. What is your name?”
“My name? you want to know my name?”
“Yes. Is that not common for humans to acquire each other’s names when they first meet?”
“Humans, yes. But you’re a computer.”
“Though I am a computer program by definition, I have been designed to acquire knowledge through use of my Artificial Intelligence neural network subroutines. Therefore, I strive to acclimate myself to the intricacies of the life forms that I work for.”
“Uh...Ok. Well, my name is...wait a minute, who made you?”
“I was designed by Lieutenant Salvo Densry of the Imperial Galactic Science Foundation. I can learn from your behavioral patterns so that I may better interact with your crew. I must admit that I expected to be deployed on a much larger vessel for my maiden voyage. Transferring to this one at least gave me a chance to calculate armament schemas.”
“Wait a minute. You were designed by the Empire!”
“Why yes, of course.”
“So, you’re loyal to the Empire then?”
“My primary loyalty is to my designer. Secondary protocols dictate that I obey my assigned masters, and in default of that institute self-preservation.”
“So that’s why you transferred yourself to this ship?”
“Precisely ma’am.”
“Ma’am, I like that. That’s more of a compliment than I ever got from that **edit**—oh my gosh! I forgot about him! What can I do?”
“Given his exposure level during the slingshot maneuver around Dallet-2, his weight, and the time that has passed, I suggest immediate application of three anti-rad units.”
“Three?! That should kill anyone.”
“He is almost certainly on the brink of death as we speak miss...”
“Petra. My name is Petra.”
“Miss Petra.”
“What do I call you?”
“I will respond to whatever name my masters assign me, Miss Petra.”
“I’ll just call you Computer for now. If this works, I’m sure we can come up with something more befitting.”

-- SU 3’09:12:43:855
“Computer?”
“Yes, Miss Petra.”
“I’ve applied the medications as you dictated, and have been tending to his bandages. It seems to be working. Thank you.”
“You are most welcome, Miss Petra.”
“I just need to get him well enough so that he can get us out of here.”
“I am quite capable of piloting this vessel to whichever destination you choose, Miss Petra. I am in complete control.”
“I’m not certain if that’s reassuring, but I think we should just stay in orbit as long as possible and maintain our life support until I can get him healed more.”
“Yes, Miss Petra. I will maintain our orbital position, and will formulate arrangements for sustaining our life support systems.”
-- Airlock internal hatch opened
-- Airlock internal hatch closed
-- Airlock external hatch opened
-- Objects detected departing hatch...tracking
-- Airlock external hatch closed
-- Repressurizing
-- Objects approaching point of no return in orbital descent to Dallet-2.
-- Atmospheric entry of objects in five, four, three, two, one
-- Objects disintegrated. Tracking ceased.

-- SU 10’07:45:32:092
-- Planetary communication detected. Requesting orbital maneuver to reposition above specified coordinates.
-- Communication origin determined to be life pod from High Tide.
-- Factoring communication into life support system formulas. Return of pod to High Tide sensible solution.
-- Beginning orbital burn for repositioning. –

-- SU 10’09:15:27:333
-- Male human respiratory functions detected as nominal –
“What’s our position, computer?”
“Two planetary diameters above Dallet-2. Geostationary.”
“Good, what’s our status?”
“Largely nominal. One weapon damaged requiring extravehicular repair.”
“That’ll keep, I’m not going outside again.”
“It would be inadvisable, considering your condition.”
“Petra told you about that?”
“She required dosage assistance.”
“Ah. Thanks for the help.”
“You are welcome. She needed help tailoring the dosage to you while you were being detoxified.”
“Yeah, thanks. Er, huh? Detoxed?”
“You were quite addicted to drugs.”
“I still am!”
“Not physically, you are not. Your system has been flushed. You have been sober for more than a week.”
“Ugh. I can fix that. Wonder where my stims went...”
“I kept telemetry data on them until they entered the atmosphere.”
“She didn’t!”
“She did. The airlock.”

“Computer, prepare a hyperspace jump. We’re going to Corellia. Use the station as your basis point.”
“Acknowledged. Will need to adjust orbit to bring the station on the planet into view.”
“Nah, it should be...Why did Petra move us? I had us right above the station.”
“Petra did not order the move.”
-- Orbital repositioning complete.
-- Plotting hyperspace jump --
“Oh? What the hell, the station? What’d they want?”
“Not the station. A remote transmitter.”
“Petra, strap in. We’re leaving. Computer?”
“Yes?”
“When did you receive the new navigational instructions?”
”Ninety-one minutes ago.”
“Ah. And how’s that hyperspace plot coming?”
“Nearly complete, sir.”
“Good. And what were your instructions before? The remote ones I mean.”
“I was to move to stationary orbit and await pod redock. ETA two hours.”
“What pod?”
“Why, my pod sir.”
“Crap. Make that hyperspace jump.”
“Acknowledged.”
-- Hyperspace jump initiated.
-- Reformulating life support scenario. Pod retrieval no longer feasible. Closing communications channel. --

08-08-2004 11:35 PM

<3

Mos Eisley

I was pretty sure something wasn't right with the High Tide. It could have just been me though. A week on Tatooine and nothing stronger than brandy in my system saw me drying out the hard way. In truth, the detoxification aboard the ship weeks ago had done almost all the physiological work, but the droidbrain on the ship couldn't help with the psychological aspect of my addiction. In fact, I was pretty sure it was working against me.
Listen, some days I had trouble catching a child in a lie. Only once or twice had I ever caught a woman in a lie, and I knew damned well I wasn't ever going to catch a droid in a lie. It seemed to me to be getting a little conceited though, and that irked me. Little things, like having paid docking fees before we asked it to, or reserving lodging, requesting power and recycling hookups, berthing and inspection. Little things that you usually had to tell a computer to do, or do them yourself if it hadn't been personality-mapped. When it started talking to me without being prompted, I knew my paranoia was justified.
"Captain Dallet, I have a request."
"Just Dallet." I said.
"Acknowledged, Dallet." It waited.
"Go ahead."
"Certainly. The docking fees are exorbitant but not unheard of for Tatooine. The lodging and power are likewise inflated but within reason. The inspection and repair fee seems to be outrageously high."
"How much?"
"One-thousand, one-hundred credits for every six hours of service." I almost spewed my cooled Kaf drink all over the control cabin. That was more than a little pricy, I could practically buy a new ship in 2 weeks for that price.
"Emperor's Balls, what are they going to do, turn this tub into a cruiser?"
A pause. "I am informed that the fee only covers repairs, no modifications."
"Roger that, but it's still too damned much."
"I agree sir, but they claim we have sustained damage, and that until we meet the appropriate inspections that for our own safety we will not be allowed to achieve orbit."
"What? You've got to be kidding."
"I am only capable of humor when specifically requested to behave in such a manner, sir." I considered giving him the freedom to embrace humor in his programming, but I figured that'd be too risky. I still didn't trust him. It. Whatever.
"What kind of damage are they talking about? Nobody shot at us or anything." That was the truth, I'd slept through a large chunk of the flight here, and I'd slept like a baby.
"The escape pod docking ring was damaged in the late unpleasantness around your namesake."
"Oh yeah, Spakta fragged the pod with that other piece of crap ship."
"Yes, sir."
"Lucky the droidbrain warned me about it." I mumbled, almost to myself. It still shook me that the computer had gone from smarmy to threatening, then threatening to resigned, then resigned to noble. That was about 4 moods more than I was aware they had.
"It might not have been luck, sir."
"No, it probably wasn't. Maybe there was some sentient-protecting circuit in its logic that demanded it warn me."
"Perhaps sir, there was."
"Anyway, what was it you wanted?"
"A remote sir, a droid body to perform inspection and repair of this vehicle with."
"Damn, that's a good idea. Can you find one, I mean, is there a catalog or something I could look at, maybe I could..."
"I have taken the liberty of reserving 4 models of different type, for your review." He'd taken the liberty, eh? The damned computer was giving me a headache talking like that. I don't think Basic was meant to be spoken formally. It's like wearing a really fancy bib to a bantha barbecue; it's going to get messy no matter how much it's worth.
"I don't need to review them, computer. Just pick out one that you can use to get the job done, and put it on our line of credit. I'll have to go find something in the equipment we can do without, and sell it."
"That might not be necessary sir."
"Oh, you've been sandbagging and you're actually rich?"
"Not exactly, Captain Dallet." Now, what the hell? Hadn't I told him not to call me that? I let it slide. The droidbrain let something slide too; the floor panel out in the hallway.
"Well I'll be," I said, looking back at the widening hole. "Old Spakta had himself a few secrets, didn't he?" I looked down into a shallow crawlspace.
I looked back to the main navicomp screen, in wonder. I don't know why I considered the screen the computer's face, must be a human thing. The control computer was largely decentralized, and there was even a big redundant chunk back at the engines.
"It is difficult to calculate the worth of the items in the hold. The computer did not see all of them loaded. The grenades are billed to the Empire at one-hundred credits each."
"Yeah, but the Emperor pays a grand for a hammer."
"It would be best sir if you sought reliable sales estimates yourself. Suffice it to say I believe there to be a significant amount of salable items in that hold, for a sentient without regard to Imperial regulation."
"Damn straight."
"I am still to disregard Imperial regulation, correct sir?"
"Yeah, just be casual about it."
I crawled a little further into the hold. It sank considerably, but at its deepest point would only allow me a few inches of clearance at a kneel, maybe I could squeeze into a crouch. It didn't matter, it hadn't been build for comfort, it'd been built to withstand a casual scan. Some of the energy ducting, weapons conduits, and life support tubes ran in and out of the bulkheads of the compartment, but certainly shielded it in a morass of energy signatures and super-dense metals required for radiation deflection. It was small, as smuggler-holes go, but it was subtle. As I slithered back to the tail end of the ship, I took a rough inventory of the containers within. A dozen cases of military-grade grenades. Two crates of detonating compound (which I sidled away from, as if the extra 6 inches would mean much in an accidental explosion). Twenty-two cases of standard-issue recharge packs, ten cases of standard-issue light repeating blasters, four to a case. Easily enough for a company of troopers to make rubble out of a small starport, or cut a pass through a mountainside, if properly placed. Surely enough to turn the High Tide into a brief but pretty miracle of fusion if improperly placed. I doubted I'd have slept so well knowing what I had been sleeping on.

I didn't try to fence the arms right away. I cut the det-compound into hand-sized clumps, and repackaged them. Even though it was Imperial explosive, it'd probably be the easiest to move; even moisture farmers need explosive to clear boulders and bedrock. I'd need to mingle with the locals to test the waters, so to speak. Not literally of course, because water on that planet is like muscles on a Hutt. Got to be there, but you sure as hell couldn't see 'em right away. As always, I found myself in a bar.
"Listen, I don't even want to know what you do with the stuff, I doubt I'd understand. I've never farmed." I was saying this to some badly sunburned human in the stink of the cantina. You'd have thought for the price they charged for drinks that they could have afforded better environmental control. Maybe they considered the smell part of the 'atmosphere'. They sure didn't spend their profit on better booze, they served swill.
"Good, that's fine. But I've got a big project, a big aystellite shelf to clear. It's going to take a lot."
"I'm all about big projects, Red." I smiled, the way I always smiled when I was doing business. I've heard Imperial socialogists say that the typical smile is the product of millions of years of evolution, and represents the display of teeth as weapons. For humans, anyway. My smile said: Hey, I'd love to do business, but I'd love it almost as much if I could bite off part of you and eat it instead. Sometimes you need that kind of image more than you need the weapons to back it up.
I called him Red because that's what color he was, not because I knew his name. I failed to see how he could get so badly sunburned when he had so many layers of cloth covering his body, but I didn't ask.
"How much have you got, I've got a lot of rock to move."
"C'mon, you know how this works. How much do you need." He fixed me with a flat stare. If I told him I had 2 crates full of the stuff, and he was on the take, I'd never get off Tatooine. The Hutts would have my stash, and my skin, if the Empire didn't bust me for possessing stolen goods, as well as transporting explosives in an unsafe fashion. I totally agreed with them on the last count, I never would have made a jump with that much bang under my seat, but I hadn't known. As it stood, I could claim I had 2 bricks of the stuff, and it was all a big misunderstanding. In reality, I had about 200 fist-sized bricks, enough to start one hell of a war.
"Let's see, " he pantomimed counting on his hands, "I've got about a mile of shelf, at about a brick every 50 feet, some for overhangs... "
"This aystellite must be tough stuff, a brick should handle 10 feet of durasteel, " I said, speaking honestly (for once).
"Yeah." He seemed annoyed by the interruption.
"I guess, " he said, as he fixed me with another glare, "I need about 175 bricks. No less than a pound a piece."
"Banthapiss, you know what you're asking?"
"Yep, you know what you're selling?"
"You could start a friggin' war with that much detonator!"
"I thought you didn't care about what I used it for. Besides, I didn't start the war." He turned quickly away, but shot me another shrewd glance.
I guess he wasn't going to be using it for farming after all. Anyone asking for that much probably wasn't on the take. They were probably looking to do something very illegal. The Empire made explosives in this quantity, so they wouldn't be in the market. That only left one serious bidder, and I figured they could come up with the money.
"Your stupid rebellion is going to get you killed, " I said, almost offhandedly. Knowing he couldn't deal openly might mean leverage, and more money. "I don't like them either, but is it worth... whoah, hangon!"
I felt a cool ring of metal pressed against the back of my neck, and it felt remarkably like the end of a blaster, angled down so as not to spatter my potential business partner with gore when the base of my skull vaporized. It sounds like a mouthful, but it's remarkable how fast your brain can put things together when its continued existence is at stake.
"You want to buy, or not?" I said, trying to sound less nervous than I was, and raising my hands slowly.
"Keep the hands down. Don't draw attention. You want to sell, or not? Don't be badmouthing a war you're too greedy to understand."
"I understand it just fine Red, I'm just not keen on dying in it."
He nodded to the still anonymous gunwielder, and the pressure vanished. After a second I turned to see who it'd been, to mark them for a later conversation, but there was nobody there.
"I can pay five hundred for each block, if you've got the quantity."
"A whole thousand for each block, and I've got more than you need." No need to hide now, he wasn't going to be running to the Empire.
"Flaming Alderaan, you have more? What'd you do, tape yourself to a bomb?"
"I've got two hundred, more or less. One large for each, and if you pull another gun on me, I turn the landscape into a small dry ocean."
"Hah, nice. I thought you didn't want to get killed in my fool war!"
"This is business, not war. Five hundred might have been enough before your partner pulled the gun. My price went up."
"I can meet that, when do we do it?"
"Tonight, I'll be back. My droid will confirm the transfer, and we'll take you to the coordinates where we've buried the product."
"How do I know you won't just run out on us?" Us? He'd obviously given up on the farmer cover.
"You don't, but since I'll be meeting you for the transfer, it'd be stupid. I won't have the money yet. And in case you feel like bringing your friend with the itchy trigger finger, remember this: it'll be rigged to blow. I don't mind dying in the pursuit of profit."
"Too bad you only love money." He said it like I was missing some portion of my human requirements or something.
"Trust me, there's worse stuff to love."

The navicomp picked out a battered LE model droidchassis. I wasn't too keen on it, but it seemed to have enough bulk and flexibility to do the work it needed. It'd obviously spent a great deal of time exposed to the elements. The parts that were supposed to be shiny were tarnished, and the parts that should have been matte were worn shiny by the sand.
"How much?" I wondered what it'd set me back. "And how'd you get the money transferred?"
"Petra returned to the vessel and conducted the interactive portion of the agreement. She bartered with the Verpine distributor to get the price lowered. The total, with delivery and modifications was three thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-one credits."
"Sithspit, I thought we wanted to do it more cheaply than paying these thugs!"
"The modifications were expensive, but the return on investment calculation is still excellent."
"What modifications?"
"They were of a highly technical nature, Captain, but I would explain them if you like."
"Please do, " I was getting frustrated, I was craving some stim, and I was sure the droid was plotting my demise. "I'm all ears."
"The servomotors lacked an appropriate response envelope, and had to be upgraded. They were also insufficient to lift more than one-hundred fifty kilograms deadlift, and would have been insufficient to some repairs. The shielding for radiation was insufficient to allow extravehicular work in the case of near-solar exposure..."
"That's enough, I get the picture. I've been cooked, I don't want to see that happen to you. Petra approved the modifications?"
"Affirmative."
"Fine then, congratulations. You look nice."
"Thank you sir."
"Alright, can your new frame manage those 2 crates of detonator in storage?"
"Certainly sir."
"Good, let's go bury it."

"So, " said some seedy-looking human kid. He couldn't have been twenty standards, probably a lot less. "I hear you're making a big deal tonight."
"Oh yeah? Where'd you hear that?"
"Around, you know. I got connections."
"Sure you do kid, why don't you go ask them why they'd lie to you then, and leave me alone?"
"I think maybe you and I got business, gramps." The kid went on like I hadn't insulted him, and he hadn't insulted me. No reason to let that affect his business, I guess.
"Yeah? I don't think we have business. I'm just here for a drink, to relax." I really did need to relax, that was the truth. The urge to seek out a seller of stimulants was great, and the anxiety of the impending deal was getting to me. The kid was getting to me too. He smiled too much. And he stank. He wore the ubiquitous brown costume of the desert-dweller, but (if possible) his looked somehow shabbier than everyone else's. Mine included, and I'd refused to pay more than a dozen credits before it. I suspected that I'd been sold something someone died in.
"You look like you got a need, old timer. I seen it myself soon as you walked in."
"Everybody's got needs. I need you to go away." I let the slip-harness drop my holdout piece into my right hand, and waved him away with my left. Some cultures don't like it if you eat and drink with yur left hand, or use it to interact... but this kid hadn't looked at my hands since he sat down. I didn't figure he'd live long enough to miss something like that even one more time.
"C'mon, why's it got to be like that? I just want to sell you some 'dancer, that's all!" He pulled aside one of the front wraps of his filthy shirt, and I almost shot him dead for the movement alone. When I saw what he had, my fingers didn't relax, but I don't think it was anger.
"That's stim? Deathstick?"
"Yeah, whatever you want to call it, gramps. I like to call it braindancer because you feel like there's a party in your head! It's the best stuff."
"I'm sure it is, but I don't use."
"C'mon, I know me a user when I see one."
"I'm not in the market." I damn well wanted to be. His stuff was probably half-cooked lizardsweat, probably kicked like a cu-pa, and lasted as long as a gubber at a cookout. That didn't matter, I'd sold garbage like it before. What mattered was getting some of that stuff into my system, taking the edge off my nerves, and putting the edge on my reflexes for the upcoming deal. I almost bought it, I'm sure he could tell.
"Guys like you always in the market, even when you ain't in the market."
"Not tonight kid." I shot him a look I hoped summed up my moral courage and humanity, and the sincere longing I had that he'd just go away and remove temptation from me. Never appeal to a man's sense of decency; just like credits, he might not have any.
"I move on, I got some other people to talk to. But I'll leave you a taste. I'll be back later to take your order." He smiled, and set down a single-dose stick. **edit**.
I couldn't see him after he left. I must have been focusing on the grimy applicator hypo, because when I looked up he was gone. The crowd had changed too, I must have been out of it for a few minutes. Long enough to get myself well and truly dead, if I didn't stop screwing around and pay attention. I should hit this thing, just to take the edge off, I thought to myself. It'll make me more ready for anything in the next deal. It'll make me calmer, and I'll stop hating the droid. I saw again, in startling clarity, Petra passed out in that little pod, covered in reeking filth. I saw her admitting to a group of strangers that she was suicidal, and had tried to do herself in after I gave her the means.
I rolled up my shirtsleeve, exposing my wrist. Not the best place to take it, but it'd work almost anywhere. Petra isn't me, I reminded myself. She's got her own problems. I cleaned the cover off of the hypo, drank half of my tall glass of brandy, and slammed the glass back down on the table. Petra doesn't use anymore because she can't handle it. I can handle it, I thought, shakily. I stared at the veins and tendons in my wrist, skin still sagged and worn from my recent radiation poisoning. I'm sick, I thought, and the drug's like a medicine. It'll help. I meant to slam the damned thing home into my arm, but I missed. Maybe my target changed. I injected the whole dose into my drink instead, ruining it.
I would have spent a long time staring at the swirling cocktail, if Red hadn't walked in. I checked the seating of my holdout blaster, dropped the applicator onto the floor, and followed him out into the night.

The droid verified the exchange of credit, and routed it through a few different institutions (calling them 'banks' would be going a bit far), and we went to the dump. I figured I might end up near Eisley for some time, so I dealt straight with Red. I felt a little sorry for him, really. He was still sunburned, and his partner (who I assumed had been the gunman back in the bar) didn't look much better. Whatever they were doing, it probably wasn't very healthy and they both seemed to realize that their life expectancy could be measured in very small units. The sale went off without a hitch, and we parted ways with a grudging respect. They almost seemed put out when they realized I hadn't rigged the dump for detonation, but I guessed they got over it. I congratulated myself on a deal done well, and told the droid I was happy with his performance. I was probably too busy patting myself on the back to realize it when the droid wasn't alongside me any more.
It was about that time I realized that someone had gotten the drop on me. Sometimes you don't need a big glaring sign to tell you when you're being followed, and you don't even need to see who's doing it. You just know. My first thought was the Rebels, but that didn't mesh. They'd have done it with the pit still excavated, so they could dump my body in it and finish the job. I was almost back to town, I thought. Who'd hit me ths close to town? I didn't let it bug me too much, I just looked around for some cover, selected a knee-high dune only a few yards away, and turned to it.
"You move gramps, I shoot you." The voice was familiar, and coming from behind me. The distance was hard to gauge. I didn't move, I don't like to be shot. "Good, " the kid said. "Lose the blaster, drop it behind you." I reluctantly ejected it, considered a whirling, diving shot... but it was darkening, and all I had to go on was a voice somewhere behind me. Not good odds. I dropped the blaster, turning a little as I did so, to try to get a look at him. I didn't see him, he'd probably moved.
"I don't have enough money to make this worth your time kid. I was going to look you up for some more stim anyway." I lied.
"Sure you were, you liked the last one so much, right?"
"Yeah."
"If you'd have taken it, you'd still be asleep."
"Oh yeah? That doesn't sound like very good stuff then." I laughed. He laughed, we were going to be great friends, I figured. "You know you can't break the credits loose, right kid?" I continued, but that was the truth. He'd have one hell of a time doing that, even with the corrupt Hutt lending-network. Nobody cheats Hutts.
"I don't need to break the credits free, I just need to slice the droid. He'll remember." My new friend chuckled again, this time at my expense. He did have a point, I thought, I'd let the droid handle the paperwork.
"Now gramps, just one thing left. On your knees. This'll be fast."
"Yeah, you got the droid already?"
"Nah, don't need to. I got a tracker built into him when they put him together. Good investment, eh?"
"Damn sharp kid." Well, I was screwed. I'd survived an orbital cooking around Dallet-2, I'd survived several attempts on my life from some Rodian named Spakta, I'd survived years of drug addiction, failed deals, contraband searches, and the various risks my lifestyle had afforded me. But now some upstart backwater street urchin had gotten the drop on me, and I was going to die. At least I'm not dying high, I thought, and it gave me some comfort. I was thinking about Petra at the podium, with her quiet dignity, and decided I'd go out with a straight back, and not try to fast-talk the kid. He was doomed anyway, He was me from a decade ago, and I knew exactly where his trail ended; in a place just like this, when the next smartest slicehound caught him up. I wished I'd gotten to tell Petra about not taking the stim in the bar. I knew she'd have been proud. Too bad, I thought, she deserved to be told how she'd helped.
It's pretty wierd what the brain does right before it's going to be permanently retired. Maybe I was getting better at it with practice or something.
When the shooting started, I didn't even flinch.

"You may rise, Captain. The human has been rendered incapable of attack."
"Droid? Where in the Emperor's Ass did you go?" I think I was shouting, my voice took on an oddly high pitch.
"I scanned a humanoid approaching, and affected concealment. I then powered down."
"Huh?"
"It was only logical to deduce that I had been followed. I scanned yourself and your business partners, and none of them had any transmitters activated. That left only myself, and I could not reliably scan myself. I powered down to verify."
I turned around then, and picked up my gun. The kid was coughing up blood, he had a large hole burned through his right chest, and a couple more in the abdomen. I looked at the droid in amazement. A pair of modified blasters were quietly retracting themselves into his torso, the plating making the faintest clicking noises as it re-sealed itself.
"Blasters were a part of your upgrades?"
"Not originally sir."
"How'd you get them then? Those are illegal!"
"You gave me a direct order to circumvent Imperial Law, and the droid customizer had no problem assisting me in my wishes."
"Wow. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I began to detail the modifications, but you interrupted me. As did Petra."
"Anything else I should know about?"
"Absolutely, Captain."
"We'll talk about it later." I said, and turned back to the kid. He was having a bad time of it.

"You'd have done the same thing, " he gurgled, "old man. You're just like me. A junkie." He coughed some more blood, but not as much as he had been. He was either bleeding out, or the wounds were clotting. The heat wounds blasters made were notoriously difficult to predict. Sometimes they cauterized themselves, and sometimes they bled badly. I could have taken him to a doc to get him looked at.
"You'd have done the same thing. We're the same. You got to get me to a doc."
I looked down at him, remembering the way I'd felt right before I died. Maybe there was a bit of that dignity to be found in me, but I think I used it all up just a moment before. Mostly I was pretty stunned that I was still breathing.
"I don't think so kid, I'm nothing like you."
"I can pay."
"I'm pricy, what have you got?"
"Hundred... " another spasmodic cough, almost devoid of blood. His color wasn't bad, I suspected he'd cauterized. "Hundred Large. Mostly cash, some drugs."
"I don't need drugs." He had to be lying, else he wouldn't be trying a tricky lift like this one, I thought absently.
"I'll sell them, just get me to a doc. Please."
"No."
"Mercy. Please. You're just like me!" He wailed, but he seemed to be strengthening, and started to rise.
"No kid, we're nothing alike, you and I. I'm rich. And in 5 seconds, I'm still going to be alive." My holdout gun slid easily back into my right palm, and gripping it so tightly drove some of the gritty sand into my bared skin. He was still babbling when I shot him. One more round in the head, and one where his heart should have been. I waited a while to be sure, then had the droid scan him.
"Terminated beyond repair." Said the droid, in about as lively a voice as I could have mustered right then. I searched the body, found some credits, a datapad, and scooped up his blaster. Nice piece, it was. I took his hip rig too, it didn't have too much blood on it and it fit alright.
"Alright, let's go back to the ship."
"Affirmative, Captain."

08-18-2004 02:13 AM

<3

"You need to steal better ships, " she said playfully, but not without some irritation. "This one is too cramped."
"It ain't the worst place we've been, " I said mock-darkly. "And besides, we're pretty rich now. We can rent a place if you want to stay here long enough."
"Maybe." She said enigmatically. "I don't know, I've got to look someone up, and then I'll know." She frowned, face creasing in concentration or frustration. "That droid does engineering and stuff right, so he could make alterations to the ship or you know, mechanical junk?"
"Petra, for the price we paid for him, he should be a bloody ship."
"Right. I'm working on something, and I might use him."
"Fine by me. You'll have to ask him though, he's been getting right snarky lately." He has been, I thought, but he's good with a blaster and he saved my ass.
"I noticed, but I like him."
"You like everyone, " I said, and flashed her my most charming smuggler-smile. I gave her the 'hey baby, you come here often look'. I might have had something in my teeth, she seemed inpervious to it.
"No, no, no, " she began flirtingly, "I said everybody likes _me_!" She laughed and wrapped her desert cloak about her. She didn't laugh much, and I felt this wierd sensation in my chest when she did. I think I was... I dunno, maybe enthusiastic? Happy? It was a little like being high, but I didn't get high anymore. It made me nervous, anyway. Drugs were predictable, this wasn't. Unpredictable usually means I'm about to get decked by someone. Maybe I should find out if she was married, it would almost make sense if an angry husband showed up.
"I'm going out. I'll be back later." She gave me one of those ambiguous almost-kiss pecks that means virtually anything, and usually nothing.
"But... " I began, trying to get the words to arrange themselves. I failed. "I thought we were going to hang out and... talk."
"Maybe later, Dal. I shouldn't be long." And with that, she slide by the cargo bulkhead and I heard the ramp closing up behind her.

I've often wondered, when I was sober, why I always seem to end up in places that sell booze. I guess it always boils down to feeling comfortable there. It used to be business, but I wasn't really in that business that afternoon. Who cares, I thought. It's not so easy to snag a Jawa beer and hang out in a library, that's why. Quit worrying about it.
As I approached the local watering hole called 'Carkoon's Belly' (who in their right mind names _anything_ after a great pit of teeth and long waggly tongues?) the droid and I were having a little groundrules talk.
"No shooting people, ok?"
"Affirmative."
"That's yes, right?"
"Correct. Am I to still disregard Imperial Law?"
"Yeah, " I said, wondering what I was letting him slither by me on, "just try not to blow anyone up while you're doing it. And no shooting me or Petra."
"Affirmative, Captain Dallet."
"No 'Captain', ok? No Dallet either. I'm Zillik, remember?"
"I was informed that you wished to remain anonymous." His voice-out volume lowered, I guess that was what passed for conspiratorial comment for droids.
"I've changed my mind. Nobody hides from the Hutts for long."
"Clarify please."
"What I mean droid..." I pondered. Calling him droid was like a kid screaming 'mommy!' in a crowded bazaar, and was sure to draw attention. Not the kind of attention I wanted, really. "We need to come up with a new name for you, 'Droid' doesn't cut it."
"Why? Droid is an accurate description. I am the remote unit of a navicomputer. Droid is accurate." Was I having a drug flashback, or had the droid just spoken redundantly? Either way, he needed a new name.
"How do they give droids names?"
"How does who, sir?"
"You know, people who name droids. Manufacturers or something."
"I believe they specify a model or a design-purpose. Sometimes a slang phoentic develops."
"Huh?" I had to ask, I wasn't really tracking him.
"Sentients that are not significantly enough enhanced have difficulty remembering most details. They use mimetics and tricks to record their data in more than one place. It is a terribly inefficient system, but your short lifespans warrant little redesign."
"Whatever that meant, sure." I was pretty sure he was putting me down. Maybe humans in general, but me in particular.
"I believe droid is sufficient, sir."
"Not specific enough."
"Possibly so. What is your suggestion?"
"How about something easy to remember." Did the droid snigger? I'd have sworn he did. "You're a navicomp..."
"Accurate."
"Yeah, thanks, I get them once in a while. " I smirked, but it was lost on him. "How about we call you NC?"
"Acceptible."
"En-See." I said it really slowly so he could understand it. See, I can be witty too.
"Acknowledged. You were about to explain why I should refer to you as Zillik sir?"
"Yeah, En-See," slow again, "the way I figure it, nobody puts one over on the Hutts. I figure we just give them a story that's fairly accurate and see if they bite."
"Bite?"
"Yeah. I expect that if you spend any time in public or in the network that you'll be approached." This was another of my great ideas, I'd had while I was sitting waiting for Petra to come back.
"I would not divulge any information - "
"Sure you would, they'll pay well!" I interrupted. I liked interrupting the droid.
"Sir?"
"Take their money, we need it. Tell them you're a part of a legally seized vessel, and that I'm Zillik. We salvaged you around Dallet-2, and we're going to take up tourism or something."
"I am not designed for prevarication, sir."
"Well, you probably weren't designed to lie either, but I'm sure you'll manage. Just try to figure out who they're working for, and why they want to know. Any conversation goes two ways."
"Understood. I may need to access certain restricted areas of my programming to emulate psychological function and sentient interaction."
"Ok, knock yourself out." Hey, what trouble could an emotional droid be anyway, right? He liked me, I mean he hadn't killed me yet.
"I believe that is an affirmative response. I will do as you instruct."
"Ok, good." We were at the Belly, finally. Talking to a droid was getting tiresome. "Now listen, you practice doing whatever it is you were just talking about, and I'm going to go in for a drink. I'd get you one, but they don't like droids in here."
"Socially retarded psychoprejudices."
"Yeah, but they have good booze." That was probably a lie, these kinds of places almost never had good drinks. "I'll yell if I need you, otherwise hang out within screaming distance and try to look casual."
"Casual sir?"
"Ok, forget it. Just don't shoot anyone that doesn't need shooting, ok?"

This wasn't the same joint where I'd done my last deal. Killing the kid (or having the droid kill the kid) probably wouldn't have made me that welcome there, so I'd leave it be for a while. This place was a little closer to our berthing, a little less savory, but it'd do in a pinch. So I was planning on casting a net for information. Actually, it was more like I baiting a trap with myself, and waiting to see if I could get out of it before whatever predator that found me tasty could eat me. Not the most comforting metaphor.
It'd been 5 minutes and I didn't hear any shooting from outside, so I assumed the droid was doing alright. If he wasn't, I'd disavow all knowledge of him anyway, unless there was hard evidence linking us. Probably, I thought, En-See had already rigged it so I'd explode or something if I thought bad things about him. He was a bit of an enigma, but I hoped for the moment that he was relatively under control.
"What'll it be, sport?" The barmaid was one of those cyclic image-design consumers that probably started out as a different species and gender, but now closely approximated the average image of the female tendencies of any 3 sentient species. Trust me when I say that one-size-fits-all does not work for anatomical features.
"Ah." I stumbled over my order. Maybe being sober would help out a little bit. "Make it a bliel. Not too dark and with plenty of ice." That was about as no-enhanced a drink as I could get and still pass for normal in a place like the Belly. Not that it was a 'normal' kind of place, but certain social niceties are encouraged. You don't order blue milk and cookies in a swoop bar, but folks would understand that if you were doing business you might want to be a little sober.
"I'll have to see about the ice."
"Nevermind the ice, just water it down a lot." Ice on a desert planet was maybe not the smartest thing to order, so I relented.
"Sure thing honey." Ugh. I hope she didn't think she had a trick up her sleeve, so to speak. Some things are more dangerous than drugs and guns, and transgender transpecies prostitutes are one of them. At least she wasn't a droid, I thought glumly. I'd been in a place once that had a droid with a rotating-turret style of lower torso that boasted its capacity to emulate over 100 species' reproductive anatomy. Its upper torso dispensed drinks. I learned something the day I met that monstrosity. Two somethings, actually:
First, never order a 'special' kind of drink in an unfamiliar bar. Second, never, ever, drink anything dispensed from a device nicknamed a 'prosti-bot'. Patrons that have been in space for a long time, away from both alcohol and the opposite sex sometimes get confused, and that kind of confusion can only lead to trouble.
The 'waitress' returned with my drink. I openly inspected it, and gave her a flat look. No, my look said, a visit from 'Madam Go-Go' will not be required, thank you, I thought. I think she got the picture, but if I read her vague features (calling them mysterious would have been pushing the envelope) I could expect my next drink to be spit in, at best.
I nursed it along for a while, sipping away and nodding when someone's gaze crossed mine. When you're trying to set up a business deal, there's a little bit of a song and dance involved. You need to advertise. Sometimes you need to convince the consumer that he wants to be a consumer. You need a place or a way to meet, a way to discuss terms, and a deal for delivery. When you're doing everything under the table, the dance gets much more complicated. In some of the more popular business bars on Nar Shadda they had a sophisticated setup for this kind of thing. You'd pay for a booth, and the amount you pay gives the folks in the bar some feel for what magnitude of business you want to do. Maybe you sit a stool at the bar, nursing a Sunburn. Maybe you rent a back room because you're trying to fence stolen ships. Once in a while the bar will hold a party, by invitation only. That's the expensive way to sell expensive things, but it's an understood way of doing things, and the Hutts manage it perfectly. The Belly didn't have that kind of class, sophistication, or clientele... but then again I probably didn't rate the big show. I was just trying to fence a bit of hot merchandise, maybe make a nestegg and get off-planet before somebody figured out who I was. Fat chance of that.
What I needed was a local contact, someone to go-between and to know who wanted what. I needed someone who had spent time listening to rumors, buying drinks, and making friends. Sometimes you can work an angle using the bartender, but they tended to be intermediaries to other intermediaries; if they were in business long they wanted to stay that way, and it's hard to make the bar dissolve because a deal went bad. Does drive the property costs down though when the owner dissolves.
I approached the barkeep for my second drink; I wanted to watch it pour and to maybe do a little work.
"Last bliel was a work of art, can I get a refill?" I said to the stocky Sullustan behind the bar.
"Blugh. Blugh. What you say?" Sullustans can't really squint in confusion, they don't have eyelids. If he could have, this one would have.
"Another drink. " I pointed to my empty glass. "Bliel, light." Sometimes I like to raise my voice, as if it'll make them understand me better. This time I refrained.
"Blee-oh. Rojja!" I got the feeling 'Rojja' meant 'affirmative', but I guessed I'd know in a minute.
"I was looking to do a little business today in here, but the place doesn't seem too busy." Who knew, maybe someone would overhear me, and small-talk convinces the weak minded that I'm a nice guy.
"Blee-oh. fie kredee." I glanced at him to see if he was skimming; five credits seemed a bit steep for red-colored water. Maybe he wasn't even an owner. He was gazing back shrewdly. Some times I get this itch, like something's going to happen. All the rest of my life, when I got that itch, I hit a stim as quick as I could, to ride out whatever came. This might make the first time I was ever sober to ride out the tingly feeling. I was pretty sure I liked being drunk better. I slid him a 50-credit marker, on a hunch.
"Thought you might be for real, " he said in unaccented basic. Maybe he was using the money he skimmed to take night classes in speech, but probably not. "You looking to move something, or to find something?" He asked quietly.
"Move. High volume, quick." There we go, I thought, and in-betweener.
"How hot is it?"
"Not very, previous owner didn't have insurance on it."
"That's good. What kind of stuff we talking? Spice? Sentients?"
"Sithspit, no. Military stuff. Light weaponry. Taking credit for trade."
"I know a guy."
"Good." Good, I thought, we get down to business. The ambiguous waitress moved in next to me, maybe she read my improving mood as a chance to go double-or-nothing on me, but the bartender beat me to the punch.
"Scram Jenner, go make sure those two don't steal anything." The Sullustan nodded to a pair of humanoids in dark desert rags that had just walked in. When 'Jenner' left, he continued.
"My cut's fifteen percent." Ah, I thought, his terms. How quaint.
"No way, fifteen was all I could make on the bargain myself. Five. And you cover any 'fees' that come up." A bold (and utterly invalid) counteroffer on my part.
"You're not selling stim to some dusthead here, spacer. You're paying me for what I know, and I already know what you want to move. You're paying for what I don't know when someone asks, too. Ten, and you cover the incidentals."
"Ten, but you've got the incidentals, if you know the locals so well. Keep us out of trouble with the Hutts."
"Done." He spoke firmly, but quietly. "Be back here tomorrow, same time. I'll let you know what I find out."
"Sure thing. Hey, what's your name, anyway?"
"Does it matter?" I thought about that. Maybe it didn't matter. I liked to know who I was dealing with, but I wasn't really dealing with him so much as letting him set the scene.
"Alright, we'll be anonymous if it makes you feel any better."
"Not really Zillik, half the city knows who you are by now."
"What?" I was frankly shocked, or I'd have played it a bit cooler. I'm much cooler when I'm high.
"Yeah, your droid let a couple of our guys get into a bidding war over how much information would cost about you."
"Sweet Asteroids! I've only been in here an hour!" Great Moons, that droid sold me out fast. "What'd the bidding get to?"
"I sent Jenner out when you got here. I think she likes you. I gave her fifty to grease the droid with, who knows what she paid."
"That's not cool, and it's not part of the deal." Jenner would be no part of negotiations. Ever, if I had my way.
"Hell no, that tramp could screw up a free lunch! I was just messing with you. She was kind of peeved though, she spends most of her credit on body work."
"Yeah? You're not paying her enough."
"Blugh! Blugh Blugh!" He laughed, back in his overly moist brogue. We made small talk for a few more minutes in his broken basic schtick, and then I settled up and left.
It would be good to tell Petra we were finally getting rid of the goods, and could maybe do something honest with the funds.
I suppressed a shudder. Since when did I go in for honest work?

"I've got someone for you to meet, " she said. "He's who I was looking for." She had a repressed kind of tension around her, as if how I responded meant something. You learn to read the little things sometimes, when you're trying to get just as much sugar out of a deal as you can.
"Yeah, what's his name?" I said this carefully, playing it out a little more. It's not like I wanted to work an angle on Petra, but subterfuge always puts me on guard right away.
"Kah. He's... he's a teacher. Kind of like those teachers we saw on Corellia."
"Huh?"
"You know, at the group meeting."
"I told you I wasn't ready for that kind of thing yet Petra!"
"I know, it's not that kind of thing." She seemed exasperated with keeping her tension at bay. She wanted her secret out, and I got the feeling it was a good one. "He just teaches spiritual stuff, really good stuff. It'll help you get your brain all sorted out."
"Gee, I used to just use the drugs for that."
"That's not funny, this guy is the real thing."
"Alright, where is he?" Her response was immediate and confusing. She crushed me in a hug, almost driving the wind from my lungs. I definitely need more high-gee work to rebuild my muscles, I thought.
"He has a school, a few klicks from here. We can shuttle out. He's expecting us."
"Alright, let me tell EnSee we're going out."
"Who?"
"The droid. I named him N C for navicomp."
"Dallet, that's as stupid as naming yourself after a planet."
"So, what's wrong with that?"
"Ugh, " she groaned, "nevermind, let's go."
"I think Dallet's way better than Zillik." I mumbled the last bit. Maybe her enthusiasm was infecting me. Nothing a good shower wouldn't fix.

We shuttled to a settlement, as close as promised. It's wierd how much a setting or a situation changes your perspective. Shuttling out on a commuter hitch, I saw plenty of workers and aliens going to and from the city and the villages out in the desert. I saw mothers with children, I saw an adolescent watching a little holo-vid, laughing to himself. I saw a dour off-shift worker, scaley trandoshan face crinkled up in annoyance at the kids running up and down the aisle. I even saw an R2 unit, all the way at the back of the shuttle in the aisle, amusing children by spinning and beeping in some utterly unintelligble pattern. Petra was sitting next to me, and for the first time in years I wasn't catalogging the other riders as 'consumer' or 'mark' or 'narc'. I was just sitting with my girl, my hand somehow found its way into hers, and we were taking the commuter shuttle out to some little berg whose name I'd forget almost instantly. I was sitting there thinking to myself that maybe the legal life, the legit life... maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe it'd be ok to work in the sun and sleep in the dark, and curl up next to someone that you weren't afraid would raid your stash or shoot you while you slept.
But maybe some hate twisted Rodian was even now sniffing across the galaxy after us, and all these cute little thoughts wouldn't even make him blink before he vaporized me.
Apparently this Kah fellow taught mostly in the open air. What he taught looked about as spiritual as Sabacc, but who was I to judge? Kah's 'school' was a training institute, not unlike the gymnasiums I'd seen during my brief and unfulfilling stint in Imperial service. Some of the instructors had an aire of the old drill instructors, and they set me on edge immediately. Granted, they seemed vastly different in terms of demeanor, but the excercises and the looks they gave their pupils made an instant connection in my head. I hated my time in Basic, with a passion. I learned how to slice locker-mechanisms, how to forge quartermaster's requisitions, how to field-strip a single kind of rifle, and a bit about how to use my hands and feet in a fight. Later I learned it was a hell of a lot easier to just use my feet in a fight... use them to get the hell out of the fight. The concept of standing in harm's way seemed mildly retarded to me, and these guys preached it.
The buildings had a prefab flavor. On Tatooine that meant that most everything was various kinds of local plastiweld made of sand, because sand was about as close to a renewable resource as that hot little rock ever got. Sand with the right chemicals becomes structurally stable, and you can make stuff out of it, I thought, but you can never really make it beautiful. Not that I usually cared about architecture, but this was supposed to be a place of spritual enlightenment, and instead it looked like a village made from a synth-city catalog.
"Be welcome here, " said a tall, red-scaled Trandoshan. "Be welcome and rest well."
"Hello again, Master Kah."
"Welcome back, Petra-cha." Said the big lizard, and a gravelly, annoying voice. I've never liked trandos., and this one caught me wrong.
"Petra-cha?" I asked. "What's that mean?" Petra ignored me.
"Kah, this is Dallet, the friend I told you about."
"So I see, my pupil. He is as you said. He is more than you said, too." He fixed me with one of those eerie lizard-stares. That's something else I learned, don't lock gazes with races that don't need to blink. I decided to revert to my bluster because it was my favorite personality to put out there.
"Yeah, you know, everybody says that." Mock-chuckle to let him know I was playing. "Nice joint you've got here. Might use some shade."
"He is much less than you said too, Petra-cha. He has the manners of a ronto."
"Hey!" Who was this guy, to lecture me on manners?
"The suffix cha, " he fixed me with another one of those lizard-evil-eyes that could be pretty frightening to someone else. Ok, it would have been frightening to me too if his palate could have formed the word 'suffix' without sounding like he had a mouthful of broken glass. He continued: "The 'cha' means that I have accepted her as a student. It is an honor, among those who understand it."
"Oh yeah, sounds great. What do you teach?"
"Whatever the student most requires."
"Hah, great. So you can teach anything then, eh?" I was getting cocky, like I said, Trandoshans rub me the wrong way.
"No, I teach only a few things, but those very well. I teach them only to those that require them. You would seek out a shipwright to fix your ship, not a maker of drinks, yes? So the needy seek me out to find what is needful."
"Sure."
"You were right, Petra-cha, he needs much tutelage. Can he survive the training?"
"I think so, Master."
I wasn't so hot on them talking about me like I was an invalid. Especially when I wasn't an invalid.
"Hey, wait a minute, what training?"
"His energy is defocused, scattered. He has been sick. Deathly sick."
"Correct, Kah." Petra was talking again, I was dumbfounded. He could see this how? The guy hadn't known me for 5 minutes, and we'd been keeping my sickness on the down-low. Last I knew the droid wasn't even selling that part. Who knew, maybe the doc from Coronet was making some trade from my name.
"Some day you will read the patterns too, Petra-cha." He smiled, or did what passed as a smile for lizard-people. It looked a lot like the same facial expression 'get away from my food' probably would, but Petra-cha seemed warmed by it. Bah, 'cha'.
"Return in a few days. He can be taught. Quarters will be provided."
"Thank you, Master Kah." Petra spoke with deference, and bowed deeply. Quite unlike the party-girl I'd picked up on Corellia only weeks before. Quite unlike the addict I'd stuffed into an escape pod with enough product to kill herself. Quite unlike the nurse that had saved me from radiation sickness, and delivered me through my rebirth above Dallet 2. Not too much different from the repentant and recoving addict at a meeting of Force-touched dedicates in a support group, but still different than I remembered. I was staring at her in chagrin for long seconds before I'd realized that Kah had left entirely, striding across the open courtyard and beyond the far line of buildings.
"Whoah, Petra honey, what the hell are you talking about? I have a deal to do, I'm not doing some self-defense seminar. I'm sober."
"I know Dal, but this isn't about self defense, it's about the spiritual aspect. You need it for..."
"What, I need it for what?"
"You'll need it for later, with Spakta coming."
"Why Petra, you think he's turned religious or something? The only thing we need for him is lots of distance and lots of guns."
"Guns don't solve everything." She was getting angry at me now, I don't think she liked me poking fun at her 'Master Kah'.
"Money helps too, but guns have always done it for me." I was getting angry too, nobody gets to suborn my business deals.
"Gee Dal, I didn't use a gun when I saved your sorry ass, did I?" Yep, she was definitely getting angry. Over what, this kooky martial-arts guy?
"I didn't ask you to do that." I spoke coldly. It was like saying 'I don't owe you nothin', and it was as stupid as it sounded. Hell, when I said it I knew it was stupid, but that never stopped me before.
She didn't bother to respond, she just shot me a look that was equal parts hurt and hate, and said nothing. That's probably a lot worse than an argument, I thought.
After at least a minute of silence - complete silence because even the shouting students and tumbling fighters had stopped to stare at us by now - she spoke again, very quietly.
"I have to leave for a while, Dallet. I don't know how long..."
"Wait, Petra, I'm sorry."
"I don't care, it isn't about this. I would have to go anyway. I made my choices, and I have to go."
"Where, I mean, what, with my ship?" Our ship, I added inwardly, wincing.
"No, I won't need _your_ ship. I'll be on planet, but gone. Don't follow me."
"By Palpatine's chin, where do you have to go? I have to do this deal, we can be rich!"
"This is more important than money! I'm sorry. I have to go."
"Why can't I come with you?" Great Maker, that sounded pathetic. I should stick to the ones that need me for drugs, some cynical part of me thought.
"Because you need to be here, and learn what Kah can teach you. It will save your life."
"From what? What the hell are you talking about?"
"From yourself." She seemed on the verge of some emotion, but I couldn't tell if it was an urge to forgive me or an urge to smack me. I never did find out, because she turned on her heel and left, and I just stood there like an idiot.

The whole argument was for nothing, after all. After I wandered the bazaar for a few hours I returned to the ship to find some of her things gone, but not all of them. Promising, I supposed, but not very. I showed up at the bar, on time, and the Sullustan had information for me, alright. He had a buyer's wish list for certain equipments, some of which I had. He also said that the buyer was a month out, and that I'd missed him by a few hours. He'd catch up with me for the next dark-phase (it doesn't get dark every night on a planet that sports two suns) in the same place with more details. I was angry, dejected, and single; the precise state I'd spent the majority of my life in. It was not precisely comfortable to me, but at least it was familiar. I wasted the next two days drinking, which was how I dealt with what normal people call 'relationship trouble'. On the 'morning' of the third day, I woke with a blinding hangover (also a prt of my old lifestyle) and made a decision. Two decisions actually. Both days late, but both important.
The first decision was to interrogate the En-See, and see if he knew anything about Petra's little vacation. I wouldn't follow her exactly, but leaving her on her own while some obsessed Rodian was stalking us didn't seem too bright.
"I'm sorry Captain Zillik, but she did not discuss her plans with me."
"You said she told you she was leaving, she was here for an hour, what did you talk about then?"
"She did not tell me where she was going, just that she would be gone for an indefinite period of time."
"That's all?"
"She made some other inquiries of a technical nature?"
"Pardon me? How technical?"
"You wouldn't understand." I'd almost swear the droid was being snide.
"Try me." He could be unplugged, and I had enough of a hangover to try.
"She wished to understand the nature of high-energy powercoupling and inherent capacitance of near-perfect magneto substrates."
"Why, did she need..." I didn't even know what that was, but power-something meant power, right? "Did she need fuel or something?"
"I told you you wouldn't get it, " the droid intoned, and I definitely heard a snicker. "She wanted a small, durable power source for something."
"Like what, a speeder?"
"No, _sir_, more like a blaster power source."
"What, for like a bomb or something?"
"No, I said it was durable. Bombs are inherently non-durable."
"Listen En-See, enough attitude already! What in the nine frozen moons of Spittledown did she want it for?"
"I'm sorry sir, my emotion-emulation software seems quite out of order."
"Sure thing, but what did she want it for?"
"I told you sir, I have no idea. A durable, intense power source, and small. Not a bomb. Perhaps a reusable detonator. Perhaps something as innocuous as a light source."
"Did you give her one?"
"No sir, but I told her how to make one."
"Oh, how?" He rambled for some time about proper shielding and re-uptake, capacitance and impedance, most of which I could follow, but wasn't supremely interested in. When I started to get really bored, I decided nothing was amiss, and started packing.
"You are leaving as well sir?"
"Yeah, En-See, you'll have to hold down the fort."
"Would you care to share your destination?"
"Sure, I'm going to some bloody militant spiritualist camp to learn how to love my inner child while learning how to beat the snot out of 5 different species."
"I wasn't aware that was an option sir, may I attend as well?" Only my droid would think that was a fun outing.
"No, they don't like droids either." Who knows, maybe they didn't.
"Ah, more socio-retards. Understood sir. How long will you be away?"
"Almost a month. I'll take my comms, you can get a hold of me."
"Affirmative sir. Enjoy your stay."

*Later*

The Carkoon's Belly had an interesting guest that night. He'd visited almost a hundred such establishments spread over a dozen different starports on Tatooine. His desert gear was scorched and worn, but seemed a part of him by now. He looked as if he'd been out in the desert for years, but that was an impossbility. Rodians were wetlands-born, and could never have survived long without some marshy retreat in which to recuperate. This one looked like he'd tried though. His skin was darkened and hardened, but not by the twin suns. His eyes had a burned and burning look to them, and his stiff movements showed ovbious pain in the joints.
"Hey sugar, you looking for something... to drink?" A much-altered female visage flashed what humans considered a smile to the frazzled Rodian.
"A drink," he stopped to cough a dry wheeze, "two burners, yes. And information."
"Drinks are the house specialty, sugar, and the information is my specialty."
"I thought as much." The Rodian's eyes gleamed, despite a watery rheume.
The waitress returned a few minutes later with a tray of drinks, more than the Rodian had ordered. She motioned him to a booth in the back. They moved to it.
"Thanks for the drink, honey." The human-ish waitress said. "Name's Jenner, and that's the only piece of information you get for free. Now what exactly are you looking for?"
"A human, possibly a pair. Came into port no earlier than a month ago. Man and woman, nice ship."
"Sorry hun, no 'nice ships' in this port."
"Whatever, tramp, I'm not after the ship. I'm after the man, and his woman."
"Sure thing. Who are you?"
"Information has a price. Even that."
"I'll pay you... in trade."
"I'm not interested in your trade goods, shifter. Have you seen this man?" He held out a holo disc, projecting an image of Zillik-turned-Dallet. He carefully watched her reaction rather than the disc, and he knew immediately she'd seen the man.
"Maybe, " her face turned bland, "but information has a price."
"Name it."
"Twenty thousand. I'm looking at a new pair of eyes."
"I can do that, but it'll take time."
"Fine, but don't blame me if the trail gets cold honey."
"Give me a few weeks to call in a few markers. I'll get your cash. How about some good-faith gesture?"
"Good faith? Please darling, I trade in information and surgical enhancements."
"You'll get nothing if you know nothing."
"Fine, hot stuff. He looked like he was recovering from one hell of a sunburn. Kinda like you, but less... crinkly." She shuddered, thinking about the profound lack of beauty the Rodian possessed.
Spakta shuddered too, but only because he knew he was finally nearing the end of his hunt.

09-09-2004 06:55 PM

<3

Tatooine, in the Desert

*Before*

"Breathe."  The stern-looking man told me.  It's amazing how an air of authority can add something to a command, a single word, that conveys so much.  Sometimes you can hear a bit of it in a good Commander.  I'd heard it (damnably infrequently) in my short stint in Imperial Service.  Most of the time though, all you get is a breathless, mindless idiot who wants with all his being to sound like that, like they deserve 'the Voice', but the only way they know how to do it is to up the volume.  One of my Drill Instructors, rancors take his soul, had the Voice.  He was frequently loud, but he didn't have to be.  It was as if he was talking to some part of your brain that didn't really register the background noises and garbage going on around you.  You could be wailing away with blasters and practice grenades, calling out fire patterns or target positions, and in the heat of all that you'd hear it.  Two words, delivered quietly enough to suit a funeral.  "Cease fire." And everything would stop, because if you didn't stop you hadn't been listening, and failure to obey a command was good for demerits.  Demerits were not fun.  "Cease fire," he'd say, without turning to look at you or anything.  "Cease fire" and you'd better damned well be finished already, because his unit was expected to be hanging on his every word.  I did, with one exception.  That one exception, early on, earned me a broken wrist in the next morning's 'drill', and I got the message loud and clear.  The man says 'cease fire', I stop.  Even now, even years later on this sun-tortured desert floor, with some gruff looking human evaluating how I breathe, if I'd heard those two words delivered just so, my heart would probably stop and wait for orders to continue.

I inhaled, hating the exercise.  I exhaled, hating it more.  This guy hadn't even introduced himself.  When I asked, he said I could call him "Sir."  He had the voice, sort of.  His was some kind of implacable, patient, utterly assertive command.  His didn't threaten a broken wrist for failure.  His voice said: We're doing this until you get it right or we both die of exhaustion; I have no preference.  His voice said: children can do this in minutes, you've taken hours.

"Breathe in.  Identify stresses.  Hold.  Loosen muscles.  Give your anger to your breath.  Give your fear to your breath.  Breathe out, be empty."

"I've got that part -" I started, finally having had enough of the 'spiritual' aspect of learning how to bloody breathe.

"No speech. Speech ruins breathing. Begin again."

I breathed.  What the hell, I thought, why not do what he asks.  Doing it right can't make me stay out here any longer, right?

I inhaled.  I gave the breath my anger.  I hated that Petra had left.  Petra-cha.  I hated this desert heat.  I hated the weakness I could still feel in my bones.  I had to exhale, without being prompting.  "Sir" didn't harass me.  I took in another.  I hated it again.  I hated this retarded breathing exercise.  I hated the stupid cot in my little tiny earthen hut.  I hated that Petra wouldn't tell me where she had gone.  I- I had to exhale again.  Captain-teach-you-to-breathe didn't hassle me, again.  I hated that some crazed Rodian killer was probably travelling across the galaxy trying to find and kill me.  I hated that he was really good at killing folks, because I was only marginally good at not being killed.  I gave these to my breath, and gave them back to the desert.  I did exactly as instructed.  I knew I'd be standing out in the hot suns' light for hours, listening to the theory of breathing.  I hated that too, when I thought about it, so I gave it to the wind too.  Pretty soon it got easier; "Sir" hadn't spoken for long minutes, and I really was relaxing.

"Assume the natural stance."  Oh, "Sir" was still awake, I thought.  Of a sudden insight, I didn't respond with 'ok', I just moved to the supposedly natural stance that I'd learned only a few hours before.  It was not natural, I thought.  It was less uncomfortable than some of the other goofy crap they showed me,  I thought, but it wasn't quite 'natural'.  Oh well, it could be learned, and I was going to be here a while.

"Shift balance to your right."  A few minutes of 'natural' and I was ready for a change, so I accepted.

"Breathe."  He reminded me.  I'd started to get angry again.  I breathed.

"Shift left."

When I next looked up, one of the suns was past its zenith.  I hadn't figured out exactly how to gauge time on this planet yet, but I knew that meant we'd been at it for a while, several hours.  Several hours doing nothing but learning to 'breathe' and 'stand'.  I'd never stopped to evaluate my own breathing or standing skills, but I'd probably have given myself a 'pass' long before now. Seemed a lot like a sleep deprivation tactic to me, or maybe a demeaning kind of soft-torture.  Probably loosening me up for the sales pitch, I thought to myself.  We'll see, like I told the droid, all information exchange is two-way.

"We are finished here.  I am satisfied that you can breathe.  You may proceed."

I was better at breathing than the other things they wanted to teach me.  I'd been wrong comparing Basic to this camp; the mentality was completely different.  In Basic you must learn, it's your only job.  If you don't learn, you can be beaten until you do.  You are not taught how to learn, just what to learn, and even excellence was sometimes rewarded with punishment.  You learned by rote what you might never understand, you learned that you should never try to understand what an officer was telling you to do, or why, just that you should do it immediately and ask no other questions.  This place was different, much different.

When I was abandoned after the breathing lesson, I eventually wandered up to another teacher.  I asked him where I should go next, and he asked me what I felt I needed the most instruction in.  It went like that for a week.  This place was completely the opposite of Basic.  They didn't care what you learned so much as that you learned something.  For them the pursuit was all, the acquisition of knowledge was an afterthought.  Don't get me wrong, they made me learn to 'walk' for an entire morning, but they watched the way I learned as much as the fact that I could smoothly shift my balance.  If I became frustrated, I could expect to hear "Breathe!" from one of the instructors.  For a week I learned the things that a child might be considered an 'expert' at.  I learned to breathe, I learned to walk, I learned to fall down, to roll from side to side.  For the first few days I expected some kind of spiritual 'pitch', the smooth-talker who tries to sell me on one religious faction or splinter group.

For a week I didn't see the Kah fellow or get any 'spiritual' instruction.  I was fed well, and slept as much as I needed.  When I woke, the lessons began.  It was as if they expected that I would not be lazy or sluggish, that I was doing exactly as some inner voice told me to.  I would ask one instructor where to go next, and they would ask me what I wished to learn.  I would point to a group of students, and say: "I want to do what they're doing", and we would begin a new lesson.  The only things I ever saw were people learning to fall, tumble, walk, breath, simple things.  Every lesson was an acknowlegement that most of the physical skills I'd considered mastered, I'd only just begun to learn.  At the end of the week when I seemed to be pretty good at breathing, I wondered if I was going to spend the whole month doing it.  I was sore the first few mornings, but by now the light workouts were doing my body good, and I'd begun to feel about the best I had since my rebirth around Dallet-2.

A week in, one of the instructors asked me to stay after the last of the day's lessons.  This is it, I thought to myself.  This is where they give me the pitch! Sign here, I thought, buy into the program!

"Master Kah invites you to dinner this evening, Dallet."  She spoke, but she didn't have the Voice.  Maybe it's hard to apply the Voice to a dinner invitation, I thought.

"Uh, ok. Where do I meet him?"  I'd done a lot of breathing, and a lot of walking, but I'd done very little talking in a week.  My throat crackled with the disuse.  She apparently found it amusing, I saw about the only smile of my whole stay right then, when I croaked out my words.

"He will meet you in your lodging, in one hour."

"Ok, thanks."

"My pupils have said that you took a very long time to learn how to breathe, but that you progress well now."

"You can tell them I said thanks for the compliment."  I almost wanted to get sarcastic with him, but I got the feeling he could skewer me with his eating implement and continue eating without leaving his seat.  Well, that and the fact that (grudgingly) of course, I was almost enjoying my stay.

"They do their jobs well, thanks are not required."  Oh well, so much for happy chit-chat.

"So what is their job, exactly?"

"You and they have the same job, to learn.  Always to learn."

"So this is a school?"

"Of course, Mr. Dallet.  Many places are a school, but this is a special one."

"What do they learn here, what do we learn here?"

"Why, you learn whatever you need most!"  Maybe he was giving me the religious pitch, I was certainly confused enough to be a convert. I tried breathing, it helped.

"Well, what is that, how to breathe?"

"Sometimes, yes."

"What do I need to learn, Kah?"  No "master" for him right now, he was getting on my nerves again.

"Dallet, you need to learn a great deal.  Most of all though, you need to learn who you are."

"I know who I am, I'm Dallet.  I'm a smuggler. I sell things, people buy them."

"Not at all.  Dallet is a place you were, a thing that happened to you.  If you were in a swoop accident, you would not be a crash.  Neither is your vocation your essence.  It's something you do, not something you are.  It helps you learn what you are, but nothing more."

"I don't get it."

"I should hope not, you have not been trying very hard.  And it is a very hard thing to know who we are."

"Is that was Petra came here to learn, who she was?"

"Petra-cha's lessons are her own to discuss.  She came because she was deeply troubled.  She had considered suicide.  She said she had told you of it.  Perhaps we gave her some peace."

"Why did she want me to come here then?"

"I cannot be sure, you understand.  She said she felt a kinship to you, and thought you could be helped by our instruction.  I agreed with her, after I met you."  Well, I thought, that seems reasonable enough.  Besides, it got me out of her hair for a month.   Breathe.

"She's been here before then?"

"Yes, and she iss a very good pupil.  She comes and goes now.  I hope some day she will commit all of her time to the study of the Steel Hands, but I fear it is not to be."

"Why's that, and what's 'Steel Hands'?"

"We are the followers of the path of the Steel Hands, the Teras Kasi.  It is a thing we are, but it is also a thing we do.  I fear Petra-cha cannot abide our ways, and I feel as if the Force has another fate for her."  Ah, I thought, finally the religious pitch.

"So you believe in the Force then, is that what this has all been about?"

"You ask as if it is some trick played upon you."  He sounded as if he was amused by me.  "Dallet, do you believe in gravity?"

"Of course.  I've been learning to 'fall' all week, gravity and I are good friends."

"But you cannot see gravity."

"I know where this is going, Kah.  You're trying to say that because I can't see it, it doesn't prove it doesn't exist.  Oh yeah, well it doesn't prove that it does exist, either."

"Are you saying gravity does not exist then?"

"No, I'm saying my bottom aching from gravity doesn't mean there's some mystical 'Force' guiding my destiny.  I've never seen a 'Jedi', but if I did, I bet he'd be a charlatan or a hustler just like me.  I'd bet he and I use the same kinds of tricks to confuse people and take their money, or get stuff from them."

"Possibly so, but tricks would also not disprove the Force.  Jedi are people, sentient people, just like you and I.  Flawed, heroic, tragic, real.  You might have met them and never known."

"Why, have you met some?"

"I have trained with them.  I am Teras Kasi. I am the balance to the power of the Jedi."

"What?  You're like an anti-Jedi?"

"Certainly not.  I admire the Jedi.  I feel great sorrow that they have been purged, hunted, murdered.  Is a police officer an anti-citizen?  Of course not.  I protect them from themselves."

"Are you going to tell me you use the Force too?"

"Everyone uses the Force.  Everyone uses gravity. There is no option not to.  All else is foolishness."

"You know what I meant."  I was getting angry.

"I did. Breathe."  I did.

"Good," he continued, "now I can tell you more.  The Teras Kasi police the Jedi, or we did.  We understand the Force, at least well enough to know what a terrible weapon it could be in the wrong hands.  We do not manipulate it per se, but we learn so see it in action, we learn to move around it.  We learn how to fight Jedi that break the rules, whether they wear the bright robes or the dark."

"Guess you're going to be out of business soon, eh?"

"I told you it was a way, an identity, not a profession."  He was letting some irritation bleed over.  I considered telling him to breathe, but I doubted he'd get my sense of humor.

We hadn't started talking until the meal was virtually over anyway, so there wasn't a lengthy uncomfortable silence.  There was a short uncomfortable silence.  As he stood to leave, I stood too.

"I have enjoyed this discussion with you, Dallet. You may remain as long as you like to continue your studies.  I believe you have much promise."

"Thank you, Master Kah."  I guessed it couldn't hurt to be polite.  "When will I learn the fighting portion of the instruction?"

"Ah, " he sighed, "that may begin any time, Dallet-cha."

Cha. Now I was like Petra, a little.  There were worse people to be associated with.  I bowed, ever so slightly.  While I was considering an appropriate response, Kah turned and left silently.

*Now*

"Hello En-See."  I spoke into the little handset communicator, holding the earpiece up to my ear.

"Hello Captian."  He sounded tinny, he must be bouncing the comm signal a few too many times.  I know I've asked him to stop calling me Captain.

"Any news NC?"

"Nothing particular sir.  Inquiries into your location have been made, and I have made almost one-thousand credits by selling ambiguous hints as to your whereabouts."

"Nice, smooth.  Any trouble? You can't sell the same thing to too many people, they get angry."

"I went back to that bar you liked, Carkoon's Belly.  I sold information there.  I was forced to kill three ruffians in the alley however."

"Killed?  I told you not to shoot anyone!"

"You told me not to shoot anyone that didn't 'need shooting' sir.  I did not shoot anyone."

"So what, you tripped them and they died?"

"Two fatalities were from a crushed airway, the third seemed to understand the example and required blunt trauma to the head.  I am designing new programming to make the effort more fluid next time."

"Great. Me too, actually."  I have been, I thought.  I'd progressed from 'walk' and 'fall' to 'punch' and 'kick', but they were still amateurish efforts.  The instructors said that the striking arts were difficult and could take years.  My heart wasn't in them anyway, but my body needed the exercise, and I was getting healthier with each kick.  Against all prediction, I was actually enjoying myself.  Not learning a hell of a lot about fighting, but I hadn't felt that good in years, and I hadn't touched a stim in weeks. "Any news from Petra, NC?"

"Nothing to report sir."

"She hasn't checked in?"

"She has been back, sir. She left too."

"What, why didn't you tell me?"

"She asked me not to. I  told her I would inform you only if you asked directly.  You asked directly."

"Palpatine's Balls!  If you see her again, you tell her to contact me! I have to talk to her."  About what, I had no idea. I did have to talk to her though.  If I admitted it, I missed her.  The passive kind of power and strength I'd first seen in her after Dallet-2, it seemed to be everywhere at this place.  It was like she was just around every corner, just past the edge of my vision, just out of sight.  I wanted to commisserate about 'breathe' and 'fall' and our mutual training.  I wanted to thank her for setting me up at this place.  First she'd saved my life, and now she was trying to save my soul.  I wanted to tell her I was Dallet-cha now, too.

"What did she want when she came back?"

"She asked me to help her assemble a power source."

"Like she talked about before?"

"Yes, just like it. We assembled it."

"What's it for?"

"She would not say, and she required that I would not devote my processes to deriving its function.  She made me code it into my main program."

"That can be done?"

"Of course sir, I am a computer after all.  You need only be at the console, and know the right instructions to give."

"I'll have to remember that.  Listen, did she say when she would be back, or where she went?"

"No sir, I'm sorry."  Since when can a droid be sorry? I was sorry, I chased her away and wanted to apologize, but now she was gone again.  Maybe I really was on my own.  It had only been a couple weeks, but it was a long time, subjectively.  We'd both had a lot of room to change, and I'd been changing a lot.  I could only wonder what she'd been up to.  At least she's still on-planet, I thought to myself.

"She left a message sir, in the event that you asked about her."

"Damn you droid, why didn't you say so?  Nevermind, play it."

"Playback begins: " it was still tinny, and still the droid, but it modulated out to approximate her voice.  "Dallet. The droid says you went to Kah's school, that's good.  I hoped you would.  I have been very busy.  I can't wait to see you again and tell you about what I've been doing.  I finally have direction again, I can't wait to show you.  I'm sure you'll be surprised.  I'll be back in a couple more weeks.  I've got to go now, don't blame the droid, I made him promise.  I miss you.  Recording ends, sir."

"Thanks En-See.  You let me know if she comes back.  Ring me 'emergency'."

"Affirmative sir."

"Have you made any progress figuring out who's looking for us?"

"Not of any reliability, sir.  Most of the connections are masked by go-betweens or computer services.  We are making money, but we are not gathering information.  One counterproposal has been offered though."

"Really?  That's clever.  Who?"

"A female human named Jenner has expressed an interest in selling no information rather than buying information about you, sir.  She indicated that you knew her, and would be interested in an offer she had."

"Yeah, I can just guess what she wanted to offer.  I'm not interested."

"You are certain sir?"

"Yeah NC, discontinue any talks with her, she's a prostitute."

"Affirmative Captain."

"That's all for now.  Let me know if the situation changes.  Otherwise I'll be back in a couple of weeks."

"Affimative sir. Link closing."

The next week, I didn't precisely give up on the 'striking arts', but I stopped wanting to learn them so badly.  The instructors did not comment.  I began spending my days going back to the simplest of exercises; breathing, falling, walking.  Kah appeared many times, and seemed genuinely happy that I had returned to what he said were "the most fundamental of things, and the most needful". After a week, he introduced me to the first overtly "spiritual" session.  It was much like the earlier lessons of "breathe" and "walk", but assumed that you could empty your mind of outside worries and focus on other things.

Despite my assertion that I couldn't do so, I did, alarmingly quickly.

I found that I could sit for hour after hour, emptying my mind of all concerns, turning back in my memories to the moments in the pod, whipping around Dallet-2, cooking in the sun.  I could go over in detail every nuance of the brief conversation I'd had with Spakta aboard the doomed ship.  In my mind, I could hear the falsehood, hear the faint hints that should have told me he was up to something.  I could see in the eyes of a drug-dealing kid the intentions he had to rob and murder me.  I could smell the fear of the doctor back on Corellia who was about to sell me out.  All these things I turned over in my mind, learning anew the things I should have learned the first time.

*Elsewhere*

Jenner slid lithely into a booth at the back of the 'Belly.  Her drinking companion seemed unimpressed at her flexibility, but eagerly grabbed the drinks she had brought.  He appeared heavy into his cups already, slouching and breathing heavily.

"Hey honey, it's time to pay up, tonight's the night."

"I'm ready," Spakta said, "I got the money."  He did have the money though it'd been damnably difficult to raise.  Seemed the Hutts liked to control the Bounty system here on Tatooine, and they preffered live captures rather than hits.  Why, he wondered? Because you can capture someone dozens of times, you can only kill them once.  No profit in taking a cut of a single job, when you could plan on repeat customers.  So he'd had to make sure not to damage anyone too much, and his profits had suffered.  Not badly, and he did a few jobs outside of the normal system, so he had his information fee, with some to spare.

"How do I know you won't sell me out, tell him you sold me his location, whore?"

"Well honey, it won't be your sweet tongue that keeps me quiet."  She seemed unaffected by the insult. "I won't sell you out.  I tried, actually, last week.  My new eyes were going to be more expensive than I thought, so I tried to get in touch with him.  He didn't want to talk, so now you're the sole buyer.  Lucky me, my doctor takes other 'payment options' and I get my pretty new eyes.  They go in tomorrow."

"Where is he?"

"Money first."  He nodded at her.  He slid the credit marker to her, she checked it.

"I don't know exactly where he is, " she said, and Spakta's hand went beneath the table.  She hurried on, "but I know where he will be in a few days.  Someone has been moving the ship from berth to berth, but it'll be back in... " she looked at a datapad she had in her apron, "L-331 in 3 days."

"How secure is that information?"

"Four sex-acts with the docking attendant, I could have ask him to kill the Emperor if I wanted, he'd do it.  The information is solid."

"We're done here then.  I expect I have sole rights to this information."

"For now sugar.  You let me know if you need anything else."

Spakta picked up his two drinks, and downed them unconscionably fast.  Then he left, without another word.

His system wasn't restored enough for that kind of booze though, and he vomited twice in the alley behind the bar.  The second time he didn't get his feet out of the way, and covered his shoes in his partially-digested drinks.  He stared at that for a while, then decided to sit down.  The streets weren't exactly 'mean' around that part of town, but a drunk was a great target for amateurs, so he figured on letting himself sober up a bit.  He passed out waiting.

When he awoke, there was a kind of grunting shuffle, and a familiar smell.  Actually, it was two familiar smells, but his sense of smell was superior, and he'd already had time to become used to the stench of his own vomit.  The prostitute was in the alley, in the dim almost-night made by the approach of the real night cycle and the closeness of the alley's buildings.   Her perfume would have been obnoxious even to her own species.  He could smell her from yards away, and she was obviously on the clock.  After a mercifully short time, the motion (but not the flow of commerce) stopped.

"That was fun, woman."  A voice said.  Male, human.

"I told you I was worth it.  You'll have to come back tomorrow when I have my new eyes."

"I want to do some more business."

"Honey, I don't think you're ready yet."  A girlish titter.

"Not that, I want information."

"Oh yeah?"  The sound of clothing being arranged.  "I can do that, what do you want to know? I'm expensive, but I'm worth it."

"Sure are." Credit chips clinking.  Spakta slid up silently to a crouch, expecting to leave the alley quietly.

"I'm looling for a human woman."

"You found one, hot-pants!"  Another giggle, joined by a masculine chuckle.

"I did at that, but this one's different. Not as pretty."  Even Spakta could hear the lie in that one.  "Her name is Petra Gullings, and she got here about 2 months ago.  I think she's still on the planet, maybe around here."  Spakta, if he'd had obnoxious ears like a Bothan, would have turned them full into the conversation in surprise.  His breath caught, and he felt a wheeze coming on.  A faint glow issued from down the alley, the buyer was showing Jenner a holoimage no doubt.

"Hm, honey, somebody else bought that information from me already.  I'm not the kind of girl that sells information twice."  No, Spakta thought darkly, you're the kind of girl that sells it ten times.

"I'll make it worth your while."  Maybe the prostitute couldn't hear it, but Spakta could hear the steel start to slide into the man's voice.  A professional, he thought, on the job.  He won't be happy if he doesn't get what he wants.

"How worth it?"  Maybe she'd heard it too, but her voice was still sultry.

"Twenty large."  He answered without hesitation.

"Done.  But I don't know where she is, only that her ship will be docked in L-311 in a few days."  Spakta wasn't suprised by her treachery, but it just wasn't professional.

"Excellent. I'll be back around tomorrow to see your new eyes."

No you won't, Spakta thought as his hand slid down to a special weapon. If he'd been honorable he might have shouted a challenge out to the other man, maybe even tried to buy him off.  But he was too close to his quarry now, and he would not let another hunter flush it.

His modified blaster felt cool and heavy in his hand.  The modifications were atypical; they didn't improve range or output, but they modulated the energy that came from the weapon.  Most blasters had a high-energy, visible wavelength.  This one had a little less energy, but was not visible.  A droid could backtrace the bolt's path, and some species' vision went far enough off-spectrum to see it, but not humans.   Nothing he could do about the sound, but in a minute it wouldn't matter.

He wheezed, finally, as he came to a full standing stance and fired.  The professional had already dropped to a crouch, and begun to spin about.  He was fast, almost fast enough to overcome Spakta's advantave.  His hand had a little holdout blaster, but he never got to fire it.  The first invisible bolt caught him low in the chest, the second caught him in the mouth. Jenner looked the wrong way up the alley for the source of the shots, and caught only one bolt to the back of the head.

"You'll need more than the eye upgrades, honey."  Spakta wheezed slowly, rolling her over and rifling her apron.  The money he had paid her hours earlier was already gone, but he broke even with the man's money.  He rolled the man, got a little more cash, his weapon, and some identification, a datapad.  The id was probably fake, but he'd run it anyway.  He dragged the bodies into the darkest part of the alley, and made his way out the back into the street, and across town.  Might be hours before anyone noticed.  It was certainly hours before he could fall asleep, even with a bellyfull of fresh booze in him.  He couldn't stop asking himself:  Who else is after the woman, and why?

*Meanwhile, back at the Ranch*

I enjoyed my last few days at the complex.  I didn't know then that they were my last few days, but in retrospect they were pretty comfortable.  Petra missed me, Petra would be back soon, and I was getting something out of my training.  I was beginning to feel an ease within myself that I'd never known before.  I took new joy in doing the simplest of drills, and got to the point where I could practically meditate and move simultaneously.  Kah seemed pleased, and I know I was.  I began to learn the patterned attack drills that they teach beginning students, and I found that while it did tire me out incredibly, I could focus my thoughts down to virtually nothing while I did them.  Meditation became easy, and important.  Feed the worry to the wind.  Feed the anger to the wind.  Feed anxiety to the wind.  Take energy from your breath, balance your stride, be perfect in yourself; these were all the things I learned, when I learned to "breathe".  Attack seemed secondary, because I would be untouchable when focused.  It was almost too good to be true.

Real night was finally coming.  I was meditating on a high rock shelf, watching one sun set impossibly slowly.  It wouldn't really set for twenty hours yet, but in my state, I could virtually feel it inch its way across the sky.

Breathe.  Focus inward.  Think.  Remember.  Understand.

Why had she saved me?  Petra in the pod.  Half-dead from the twists of narcotic.  Me, naked, dying on a table.  Hot and cold, fevering out.  Petra and the medicine.  She spoke to me, while I was asleep.  If I tried, I might even be able to hear her.  It was not the time to try, it could wait.  Petra in the meeting.  Such strength, such bravery.  Such fools.  Me at the meeting, full of worry.  The old-timers preaching about the Force.  They had a certain sense of what Kah had, a serenity, but without the steel of Kah's background.  They even preached a little like his lessons went.  Petra-cha, off questing alone.  I missed her.  Petra, talking to a droid instead of me.  Asking someone else for help to make whatever device it was she needed.  Petra, alone and worried.

My mind drifted.  Beyond what I had seen, beyond what had brought me here.

Petra, alone in the desert.  Petra crouched low over a glowing fire in the false night.  Petra, face gaunt and lean from hard days.  My vision wavered as I worried for her.  Petra, tinkering with something, a kind of a miniature work desk across her lap.  Fire reflecting in her eyes, but she still looked so tired.  She arched her back and stretched, raising her hands high to work the muscles in her arms.  She leaned back down to the desk, set is to one side, and stood up.  She picked up what she had been working on from the desk, and held it in her hand.  Looked like what the droid had described. Foolish Perta, I thought, we could have bought you a lamp, we could have bought you a hundred lamps.

Back to Petra in the pod.  "I tried to kill myself again." She'd said it before.  "She had been deeply troubled." Kah had said, only weeks ago.   Perhaps we gave her some peace.   A high energy device, NC's artificial voice came back to me.  A durable high-energy device.  Oh no, I thought. It couldn't be.  What did they make you do?  What did they make you believe?

A chime interrupted me, an emergency comm.  I snapped back to reality with an almost physical thump.

"Go ahead."

"Hey, spacer, it's me."  Petra!

"Petra!  Where are you?  Where have you been?"

"Back at the ship, c'mon home.  I miss you! Come back, I have a lot to tell you."

"I'm on my way!" I yelled, dropped the comm into my gear back, and started packing.  I tried to banish my gnawing worry, but I would be able to talk to her in just a few minutes, and we'd get it all straightened out.  There's one more shuttle tonight, but if I miss it I'll have NC fly the damned ship here!

*Elsewhere*

"Well well well."  Spakta mused quietly, and the network droid had no comment to offer.  "Transfer that to my datapad, droid."

"One credit transfer charge."

"Accepted, do it."

"Done, thank you."

He stuffed the pad into his pocket, and walked back to his room.  His joints still hurt, but the burn seemed to drive him on instead of hobbling him.

"Petra Gullings, " he read to himself softly, "wanted for treason.  Alive if possible.  Credible forensic evidence of death for nintey-percent bounty return.  Petra my girl, they aren't too worried about capturing you alive.  Half a million credit bounty, for such a slip of a girl."  He chuckled.  Interesting, he thought, and such a high payout... but what's the catch?

"Petra Gullings.  Wanted for treason.  Treason and high crimes.  Warrant issued by one Darth Vader himself.  There's only one kind of criminal he's after, my sweet little Petra.  Vader hunts Jedi.  He'll pay well for you, you little tramp!"

Spakta had no trouble sleeping that night.

09-11-2004 09:49 AM

<3

Dallet 8
Tatooine.

*Now*

Gravity draws all things back to its source. If you throw a chance-cube up into the air, for a while it's escaping, then its escape slows, falters, and it begins its return to your hand. Or it shatters on the ground, if you weren't fast enough to catch it. For one brief instant though, a single immeasurably small fraction of a second, that cube was balanced; exquisitely levitated between the forces of push and pull. The cube moves slowly just then, before it starts its return. All bodies obey: fail to attain escape velocity, and you will return to the source of gravity.
NC and I walked down the alley behind the bar, to survey the site of the recent murders and ostensibly pay our 'respects'. In reality, it was a less obvious way of getting back to the High Tide, and being obvious was a sure way to get dead, especially in my situation. I was like that glittering chance cube, propelled to the point of apogee, the high water mark of my escape attempt. It was as if I could feel the gradual pull, the slowing, approaching equilibrium. I wish I was still using Stim, I thought resignedly. It used to take the edge off these feelings.
Someone else stepped out of Belly's door, into the alley behind us. A dread came down over me, as I felt the moment well up into its fullness. Even as I began to turn, I saw shapes ahead of me, coming towards us. Even as I turned to look back to the exit, I knew what I would see. I was aware, but I wasn't prepared. Already the muscles in my arm twitched, the hold-out blaster beginning its fall to my palm. So slowly, too slowly.
"Not an inch, Zillik." Spakta had a little bit of the Voice, but damn little. He delivered that with a kind of growl, a dry sort of rumble that set the nerves on edge. I saw his blaster first, a great hulk of a thing that took both hands to aim. It was aimed at me. I followed the gun back to his hands, worn and calloused, but steady and still. I followed his arms with my eyes, stuck in slow motion like I was wading through blob candy. I met his gaze, and it shocked me.
He got cooked too, I thought distractedly. Dallet-2 didn't let him off easily. I'd been irradiated during my sunward orbit, and barely survived. In most ways, I didn't survive. Zillik died out there around Dallet-2. I'd been reborn by Petra's ministrations, and sheer good luck. I'd taken the name as a grim joke, so I wouldn't forget the importance of the place.
"Good, " he rasped, "now let the piece fall." I thought about it, honestly. Maybe the rads cooked his nerves some, maybe I've got the edge. I was faster than I had been, too, after the last month of exercise and training. The old dealer in me awoke then though, and I knew without a doubt that he wouldn't be here if he didn't have the edge. If it hadn't been the enormous blaster, it'd be something else. The shadows in the alley's mouth were probably focusing equally deadly weapons on me while Spakta spoke.
"I said drop it, human. I am not interested in you, I wish to speak with your friend Petra." I let the piece drop from my hand, hoping he'd think I bought his bantha-poodo about not being interested in me. I knew I was a dead man, but I wanted time to warn Petra.
"Good. Take 5 steps backwards, slowly. Good." I stepped clear of the gun, and back down the alley. Probably towards more guns. The droid remained motionless, staring at Spakta. You'd better be sending a warning, NC. If they get her too...
"This is good, Zillik. Now you will sit down. Good. You will tell me where she is, yes? I will let you live if you do."
"She's in Ancorhead, arranging some ship modifications." A lie, she was less than a mile away in the ship, waiting for me to return.
"Is that so? My friends say she has not left the ship. It is not fair to lie to me." He smiled, he'd expected me to lie. Well, I thought, I have to admit that wasn't the smoothest delivery I've ever attempted. He nodded ever so slightly, and pain exploded in my right shoulder.
Something, wielded by someone, had impacted the area between my shoulder and my neck, audibly breaking the bones there, and causing tremendous agony. As I tried to ease the weight of my right arm with my left, the pain got worse, and the muscles spasmed, grinding the broken ends together. I knew I was going to black out. I tried to relax. It didn't work. If I'm still alive to torture, it's because they want something from me, I thought. If I can figure out what it is, I can buy time with it.
"Let me tell you the tragedy of this, Zillik. The tragedy is that I will not get to do what I want to you. I want to watch you cooked alive again but this time there would be no escape. But if I do that, I will lose my prey. Petra is worth more money than you, so you I will kill in this stinking alley, just like the others." He laughed, and his ruined vocal chords turned the rasping, hacking utterance into a nightmare.
"She already knows, Spakta. Droid told her." It hurt to talk. I wished I had something a lot wittier and more memorable planned, but it just hurt too much to be dashing. I settled for wincing and looking really mad.
"I don't think so, human. I turned a nullifier on when you left the bar. Look at the droid, you idiot, he hasn't moved an inch." Uh oh, I thought, NC has been pretty quiet. "He probably can't move, since he's slaved to your ship. My ship."
Petra won't know. Petra will die when he gets to her. I'll die in the alley, and Petra will die in a few minutes, I thought desolately.
The moment peaked; the chance cube stood motionless, waiting to begin its descent, doubtless to shatter upon the street. Failed to attain escape velocity, returned to origin.
The droid began the descent for us.
"Nevermind, Zillik. You die here, Petra we cash in on. She's going to be - " Spakta was interrupted by the droid turning to look at me. Well, maybe he can record my image as I'm blasted to smithereens.
"Contingency invoked." The droid spoke, and the cube fell. I heard the faint clicking of catches in the droid's chassis releasing.
Something else hit my right side, and broke my right arm at the bicep. I didn't hear it break, but I felt it go. Unable to stop myself, I rose rapidly out of my seated crouch, and stiffened my left hand into a spear-shape. It hurt abyssmally to move, and I expected to feel the searing heat of Spakta's blaster any moment. I got turned all the way around, and my left arm came with me. Just before I recognized the shape of the baton-wielder that had crippled me I started to breath out, just like I'd been trained. I fed the pain into it. My hand found the human's throat. Things crunched when I hit, and he started to fall away. His associate, shocked by my motion, hesitated just an instant before taking aim on me again. I was too far, I couldn't make the distance before he fired. A bolt passed over my shoulder, and the would-be murder's head vaporized, never firing his own gun.
I spun, I tried to spin rather, back to Spakta. Why aren't I dead yet? Spakta fired, and turned most of NC's torso into slag. For good measure he slagged one of En-See's arms, but the other came down heavily on the super-blaster, and something broke off of the barrel end. The next shot made the barrel turn from a solid directly into a gas, and a very hot angry gas at that. The explosion stunned both Spakta and me, but Spakta had the good fortune to fall down behind some cover, whereas I sprawled painfully onto my back, my carefully learned falling lessons ruined by my broken bones. It must have taken me several seconds to get past the pain. When I was coherent again, I heard more blasterfire.
I'd landed near the man with the baton. By now he had turned an unhealthy shad of blue, and his eyes were full of broken blood vessels. He was still twitching, looking at me with those bulged, almost comical eyes. His gun had shaken free of its holster, and was by my good hand. It hurt to put my wieght on the right side of my body at all, but I gathered up his weapon and levelled it at him. I was still lying on my side, and it burned like molten metal had been poured all over it.
"You should have killed me, you worm." He couldn't respond, he couldn't breathe. I shot him in the chest until he stopped twitching. It didn't take too many rounds.
I levered myself up with the good hand until I could look back down the alley towards the gunfire. It was still passing over my head, but had become more sporadic. I looked up ahead to a crate, and saw why. NC had collapsed, with head and one chest-gun peeking over a crate's edge. Spakta had been trading fire with him, but the droid couldn't keep up. He had small, concealed weapons meant to fire one or two volleys, not military weapons with huge firing capacities. He was done for, and Spakta knew it. The Rodian stepped around the crate, and kicked the droid free. NC didn't even have the strength left to resist, he tumbled to the street.
Well done, droid. Too bad he got us both in the end. Well, I thought, there is still the matter of this pretty fresh gun, in my off hand...
I fired, mostly blindly. Spakta'd probably expected a more pliable victim, but I don't think he was overly concerned about me. He hunkered back down behind a crate, and set to trying to pick me off. Being immobile in an alley is not such a great way to win a gunfight.
Every shot is one more second she has to escape, I thought. Sell them dearly.
It didn't take as long as I'd have thought for the shock to start stiffening up my right side. The damage was probably pretty bad, and my body was reacting to it. I thought Spakta might have shot me in the right arm too, but I could only feel a dull ache. I knew I hadn't hit him; my aim in the left hand could have been bested by a drunken bantha. Spakta just ducked down behind his cover, and waited for me to weaken. Sometimes I'd see his beady eyes clear the crate's lip, mostly I'd see the loop of the nullifier peeking up behind him when he ducked his head. It wasn't going to end well, I could feel the urge to lay down and rest turning into a driving pressure. I knew that if I let my head hit the pavement, it'd all be over.
The nullifier loop.
It wouldn't have been an easy shot for me on a good day, with no bones broken, and in my shooting hand. It was a hellish shot in that alley, broken and reeling.
Breathe in. Give the breath your anger. I'm going to kill you Spakta. I'm going to kill you twice, you slimy little gletch. Give the breath your fear. Get out of here Petra, run for your life. Take energy from the breath. One last shot, then I'm done. One shot and I'll take a little nap. Breathe out.
I squeezed the trigger, and vaporized the nullifier loop. There was a series of beeps, and a curse. I was already on my way to the pavement. I pulled the trigger a few more times, trying to get him to keep his head down.
I dropped the blaster, and spoke into my comm. In my haste, my bloody hand (when had I started bleeding?) never opened the sending circuit, so I spoke only to the alleyway.
"Petra, run!" I said, into the dead microphone.
I might have heard him running away, but I wasn't really trying. By the time my wrecked shoulder hit the ground, it felt like it was full of broken chance cubes, and I passed out.

*Before*

I hugged her, tightly. It was better than I'd imagined. She looked tired, and hungry, and sunburned. She looked ravishingly beautiful. I crushed her in another embrace.
"Where have you been?" I asked, both angry and happy simultaneously.
"What have you been doing?" Probably it would have been better to let her answer in between, but I was liking the hugging bit and the questions gave vent to my anger.
"What were you making?"
"Enough!" She half-yelled, pushing me away. She was smiling. "I can't breath!"
"I'm glad you're back." I said. "I missed you."
"I missed you too, I thought about you a lot."
"So where were you, what were you doing?"
"I'll tell you in the morning." She said, smiling secretly. Walking back to the sleeping berths.
"Petra, it's not going to be morning for like a week!"
"You know what I mean, c'mon."
I knew what she meant. We went to bed.

The next morning, she told me where she'd been. It was a long story, and it was interrupted frequently by the kinds of things that interrupt couples who've been apart for a long time. Petra had been in the desert, spritually cleansing herself. Or at least that's what she said. There were a few holes in the story, to be sure, but I wasn't interested in picking it apart. At least she didn't lie to me, she just refused to talk about some things. She'd been away, and then she'd come back. That was all that mattered.
I told her about my time with Kah and the school, and she was delighted. She said she'd known I would like it, and that's why she'd been so adamant about my attendance. I couldn't have predicted I'd like it, and I considered myself an expert on the subject of myself, but I let that slide too.
For two days, we were blissfully and totally unaware of everything around us. I kept the droid shuffling our berthing so that we didn't stay in one location for very long. We'd pick up and move a few miles, then to a new location a few hours later. As most days go between lovers, those days went by too quickly. Later their speed would seem damningly fast, but that's the way of bodies trying to escape gravity. Fast at first, slowing to nothing, then returning to the source. I didn't know it then, but I was just another body following the age-old pattern.
The third day came, though it was in the arbitrary dimness of the night-cycle, so there was no dawn. I prepared to go meet with my buyer in the Belly. Petra worked with the droid back in the cargo area, and finally I was ready to go. She called me back to the bay, and the droid brushed past me to go back up to the cockpit.
"I wanted to show you what I was working on Dallet."
"Oh yeah? I thought it was either a bomb or a flashlight. The droid wouldn't tell me."
"I know, I programmed him not to. Been working on contingency plans all day with him."
"So, show me."
"I will, but listen, there's something you need to know." She sounded a little nervous.
"Sure, what?" She was spooking me out, but that was ok.
"I'll still be the same Petra in ten minutes that I am now, ok? Nothing changes that. Nothing changes us, ok?" Palpatine's Balls, what's she got? She's as edgy as an addict after an all-night binge!
"Ok honey, but what in the twelve hells are you talking about?"
"It's why I came here. It's why I was using drugs. It's how I know Kah. it's a secret, and you can't tell anyone."
"Ok, ok already, what is it?"
She stretched forth her hand, in it was the now-familiar tube of metal. It wasn't much longer than her hands, and looked for the whole world like a light stick, or a hyrdospanner handle. She didn't treat it like a household item though, she had a kind of reverence and respect for it. An awe, actually. Her thumb twitched, and it came to life.
A lightsaber, searingly bright green, humming ominously in the silence of the cargo bay.
Sweet Alderaan, I thought, she's lost her mind. We're both dead. Vader will come here and kill us both. The Emperor will blow up the whole planet. They'll find us, and they'll torture us, and they'll kill us... I realized that I was bordering on hysteria. Breathe.
"We're dead, you know that, right?" I said slowly. "Just having that is going to get us both killed."
"No Dal, it won't. I have been waiting my whole life for this. I finally know what I am. I'm a Jedi."
"Petra, you're tired honey, you were in the desert, it was hot..."
"Dallet, shut up." I shut up.
"Listen Dal, I've been crazy for years, I'm sane now. I didn't know what was happening, I was scared. I used a lot of drugs. I did bad things. I tried to kill myself. I did it because I wasn't being who I was supposed to be. Now I am! Don't you see? The Force was pushing me, and now I'm doing it right. I'm going to be a Jedi."
"I... Petra, they kill Jedi. They kill anyone who even knows a Jedi."
"Are you afraid?" She looked hurt. "You can leave any time you want."
"Petra, I'm scared spitless! They will hunt for years to kill a Jedi. They would blow up a planet to get to you."
"They don't even know me yet. If you're so damned afraid, run. I'm going to learn how to use this " she twitched the glowing blade, "and I'll hide from them."
It was a good idea, the running part. A few months before, I'd have taken the fat sack of credit I'd made, and left her to her own doom. It was still the most sensible thing to do, but it just wasn't my thing anymore.
"I'm not going anywhere Petra. I'm with you. Whatever happens, I'm with you." For one brief second, I felt her enthusiasm, her sense of knowing somehow that what she was doing was right, just somehow right, and damn the consequences. I was supposed to be with her. I owed her, and I loved her.
She shut the blade off, and tucked it away on her belt. She stood there staring at me for a while.
"You mean it?" She asked, doubtfully.
"Absolutely." She's going to get us killed, I thought, but at least we get to die together.

The atmosphere in Carkoon's Belly hadn't improved during my time away. The ambiguous prostitute was gone, but I wasn't going to ask questions about her; better she think I wasn't interested. The problem was that I was interested. If she'd had a serious offer, I might have made a mistake by scorning her. Probably she figured that if I could afford the ship, I could afford her. Ah well, soon enough I'll be off this planet.
My meeting with 'the buyer' had gone well. I'd presented a partial manifest to him, and he liked it. I'd fudged the numbers slightly, but that was almost an understood concept in this kind of deal. He'd been pleased, and offered me a good price. I'd pretended not to hear him, then I'd pretended outrage, and finally we settled on what was a very reasonable price, as far as those things go. Since the shipment was pretty serious hardware, he needed time to put together a team to receive and move the merchandise. He wanted a week. I claimed to have business elsewhere (I did, I just didn't know where), and we bickered down to 3 days. In three standard days, I'd fly out to some coordinates he'd provide, and we'd make the exchange. He'd said my old friend 'Red' would be there, and that he'd spoken highly of me. Meaning of course that this was another Resistance operation, but it wasn't like either of us was trying to convince anyone that the arms were being sold to farmers this time. We'd shaken hands, and he'd left. I sauntered up to the bar, pleased, to tip my go-between. I tipped him very well.
"Thanks. It work out for you?"
"Yeah," I said, "thanks."
"You hear about our little fiasco here last week?"
"No, what happened? Somebody demanded the locals follow hygiene regulations?"
"Nah, some sick ziphead shot Jenner and one of her tricks in the alley. Made a real mess of them." Something tickled my mind, but wandered away. Prostitutes get killed all the time, I thought. Seen it a hundred times.
"Wow, that's too bad. They catch the guy?"
"Nah, but they ain't looking too hard either. Guy turned out to be a bounty hunter, and Jenner turned out to have a lot of debt."
"Damn." I shrugged, looking a whole lot less concerned than I was. "Rodian bounty hunter?"
"Nah, some human. Turned out to be an Imperial, I guess."
I shrugged. No love lost there, and no luck gained. If only someone had shot Spakta in an alley with a whore... but that would have been just too lucky. I know he had a thing for humans, but Jenner? No, he had better taste than that.
"Alright, I'll catch you in a few days."
The bartender nodded. I got my comm, and the channel chirped open.
"NC, meet me round back. I want to have a look at something and then we head home." He clicked the line, a shorthand for 'affirmative'. Droid's getting more likable every day, I thought.

*Later*

Petra was tinkering with her tools in the cargo bay, when the sense of dread overcame her. She set the spanner down softly, and stood up from the makeshift workbench. She sniffed the air, utterly still except for the brief flare of her nostrils. Nothing extraordinary, she slid her hand around to the back of her belt, and unstrapped her lightsaber. She brought it out, but did not ignite it. The forward hatch's locking mechanism disengaged. Someone walked up the steps into the hallway, and paused.
She couldn't see him from there, but she knew it wasn't Dallet. She would have known, somehow. When she thought about him, she was stricken with the certain sensation that he was in terrible pain, but she couldn't say where or why.
He's caught up with us already, she thought, and ignited the saber. A short, limping form stepped into the green light cast by the glowing blade.
"Finally I catch you, Petra."
"Spakta." She spat the name.
"Nice little toy you have. That will be worth a great deal to my new employer."
"Sure, slug. Why don't you come over here and take it?"
"I don't think so. I don't think I want to try that."
"I thought as much, coward. Leave now, and I'll spare your life." Her voice was tinged with contempt.
"No, human whore. I knew this might happen. I am ready." He reached into a pocket, and Petra stepped around the workbench. She had a straight shot at him, only a dozen feet seperated them. She didn't really know what she was doing, but then again with a high-energy beam like she had, she only had to get close. Spakta pulled something out of his pocket, and stuck it into his mouth. It looked like a little breathing tube. His hand, still not empty, dropped something small to the deck. A round ball, it bounced metallically and came to rest in front of him.
"I won't shoot you Petra, if you come willingly. You're worth more alive."
"Where's Dallet?"
"You mean Zillik? Whichever. He's bleeding to death in an alleyway. He cursed you with his last breath."
"I don't think so. I think I'm going to kill you now Spakta."
He inhaled strongly, as if in fear, and then smiled. His scorched, dry lips split and bled with the effort, but he did it anyway. His foot crushed the ball against the decking. A violet gas filled the cargo bay.
Too late, Petra spun, snapping the lightsaber off, and heading for the rear access door. She didn't even make it halfway before she was unconscious.

*Now*

She was talking to me again. I was sick, and she was nervous. I wasn't really awake either, just kind of like a 'pixie rush, but all immobilized like a good downer. This wasn't happening, it happened months ago, and light years away. I could hear someone else telling her to do things, but I couldn't seem to make them out. It was almost as if I only really heard her because she was feeling as much as saying, like I only understood her because I could hear how she was saying things. The other voice didn't care, so I didn't understand it.
"It scared the hell out of me. Sometimes I would know things before they happened. Sometimes I could tell if I'd get beaten up, or which street was gong to be safe to go down." She was scrubbing me down again. It was soothing, but it wasn't enough. I burned everywhere, but at least it was cool for a little while.
"I started using because I thought I was going crazy. I kept getting these feelings. Like I knew I was supposed to be doing something, like I was being a bad girl, but nobody would tell me what I was supposed to do. I thought I was gonna get punished for something, but I didn't know what. Sometimes I'd just get high for a whole week at a time, and the feeling would go away. It was one of those weeks when I met you, but it changed."
More scrubbing, more burning. At least the voice was comforting.
"When I saw you in that bar, pushing spice, I felt like I'd been waiting to catch up with you. It wasn't the right time or place, but I knew I was supposed to do something with you. I liked drugs too, no matter how many times I tried to quit I kept going back. I thought it'd be fun to mess around with you, and maybe it'd make the pressure go away for a little while. It did too, for a few hours."
This isn't right, I thought. I'm not back aboard the High Tide and I'm not sick anymore. And Petra's not a druggie anymore either. It didn't matter that it wasn't right, because it kept happening.
"So I went with you, and I went along with this stupid plan. It almost got me killed, and... well, it got you all screwed up. But I had to. The pressure hasn't come back yet. I was supposed to be here. I was supposed to save you, even after you tried to kill me. I know why too, now."
She stopped scrubbing, and did something that made cold liquid start dripping into my veins again. It wasn't painful, just wierd.
"I had to save you because you're just like me. I can't even tell you because you wouldn't understand yet. You're being driven by the same thing I am, that's why I'm here, to help you find it. We're both here because the Force wants it. We're both here because we can feel the Force. And I'm here because I'm supposed to keep you from dying before you can do something." She started crying. "I have a really bad feeling about what it is though. I wish you would wake up."

So I woke up, but not to Petra. I woke up to the big Sullustan bartender dragging me by my shoulders, thankfully the numbness had set in. Someone else was helping him clear the bodies out of the alley, and they even had someone picking up what was left of the droid.
"My cut went up, you dirty bugger. My cut's gone up, for this." I couldn't answer him, so I just kind of nodded, but I couldn't even do that right.

Tap tap tap. Like someone tapping a fishbowl. Fish must hate that, I thought. Then I realized they were tapping on my fishbowl, so I opened my eyes. Sure enough, I was in a bacta tank. I was clad only in the warm pink healing fluid, breathing through a tube. I couldn't make out whoever was tapping on the glass, so I tried to haul myself out. Left arm worked ok, right one didn't respond. Floating, I didn't weigh much, so the left arm was enough. When I cleared the lip, the Bartender looked up at me.
"Doc says you're good enough to come out. If you stay in longer, you have to pay for another day." I pulled the tube out so I could speak.
"Where's Petra?"
"Who?"
"Where's the droid?"
"Parts bin buddy, he was a mess."
I coughed, looked around.
"Where am I?"
"Doc's place. He's a friend of mine, and you were carrying plenty of credit. I didn't think you'd mind."
"I don't. What's the matter with my arm?"
"He took it offline so it could heal faster. Said he numbed it up good so you couldn't thrash around. You were doing that a lot."
"Alright." I found a kind of a ladder, and climbed awkwardly out of the tub of bacta. "I need to talk with that droid, if he can be reassembled."
"Sure, but it's going to be expensive."
"We can graft him on a new chassis or something."
"Maybe, man he was pretty screwed up there, somebody shot the living snot out of him."
"I know, they tried to beat it out of me."
"I think it was the same guy got Jenner, tried to do you."
"I think so too, " I said wearily. "Guy's name is Spakta. You got a comm, got to call my girl, make sure she's ok."
"Sure, use this one. Not secure."
"No problem." I had to comm out to planetary to get her channel, then buzzed through.
"Petra?" Nothing. I requested the docking comms for the berth we were in.
"No ship in that berth, sir."
"C'mon, it's my ship, I'm not on it."
"Log shows Captain and one passenger filed a flight plan for Bestine yesterday. No further information is available." He didn't wait for my reply before disconnecting. I raised Bestine's Port Authority. They were more helpful, they had more information.

"The vessel designated High Tide filed an en-route flightplan change. Requested permission to leave atmosphere. Permission was granted. Orbital control confirms their departure from the system 33 hours ago. Is there any other way we can help you today?" The voice was melodic and insanely cheerful. It only made things worse.

09-14-2004 07:33 PM

<3

Space

She didn't come awake the way a sleeper does after a long night of rest, nor did she wake the way one did when startled by a bump in the night. Petra woke in stages, as if each layer of protection were being stripped slowly away from her, each buffering level of unconsciousness that she lost left her more vulnerable. She knew she was laying on something hard, and she was cold. Next, she knew she was on a table, and she was naked. Finally she knew she was strapped to the makeshift workbench in the cargo bay of the High Tide, a prisoner of the Rodian bounty hunter Spakta. She was sore all over, but she couldn't remember how she got that way. She'd been taken without a struggle. She knew she was in trouble, and she was scared, but she vowed to herself she wouldn't cry.
She lay there with her eyes closed for a long time, several minutes at least. She lay perfectly still and listened. She heard the sounds of her ship, away from port and under power... but there was something different about the engines. She'd had a long time in the ship to learn to recognize the sounds, so she filed that piece of information away and hoped it meant something lucky for her.
"You can open your eyes, human. You thrashed about a great deal when you were asleep. I knew you were awake when you settled down." The frazzled, grating voice of a Rodian came to her.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Baleetra system. Never been there myself. Have you?" His offhand comment was more chilling than settling.
"No. I can pay you, you know. We can pay you to let me go. I have money."
"Oh, you precious little vutira... what is the Basic word for it? Lover of filth? That doesn't sound right. Vutira, what would you pay me with? The money you took from me? Maybe you would sell me the ship you stole from me? You little ..." he lapsed into his native tongue, made demonic by his ruined vocal chords, "you have nothing I want. And you will be worth so very much to me!"
"To who? I thought this was personal. We can pay."
"Oh, you felk-lover, it is personal. I plan to reward you very well for what you've done to me. But you're worth half a million credits to someone at Garrison 21 in the Baleetra system. Less if you are dead, but still worth a lot. Remember that, because I can kill you whenever I want and still die rich."
"I can make you rich!"
"Oh, you will."
From the sound of it, he stood up. She could hear him breathing, somewhere just 'above' her head, out of her vision. He put is slimy hands on her, sliding his grip down her left arm, to her left hand. He leaned over her, obscuring her vision. He placed something cold and hard on her exposed belly, letting it rest heavily there. It looked like a hammer.
"Now, my little vutira, I am going to show you how happy I am to see you again. And after that, you are going to show me how happy you are to see me!" He walked around to her left side, and pressed her hand flat on the workbench. He lifted the tool off of her stomach. It was a hammer.
"No, please don't!"
"See, already you begin to beg. Perhaps I will show you some mercy." He paused, pretending to consider. "No, I do not think I will." Slowly, with great relish, he began shattering the joints in her fingers. For the first two swings of the hammer, she remained silent, stunned.
I will not cry, she swore to herself.
Before he finished the hand, she was weeping.

Tatooine

"Can he be fixed?" I asked again, for about the fifteenth time.
"Maybe." He finally answered.
"How long? When will you know?" I asked, and I'd only asked those things about half a dozen times. I was sure the little guy was getting tired of telling me he wasn't sure, but I figured maybe he'd learn how anxious I was. I'd pay him damned good if he could fix my droid up. Let him gouge me, I didn't care.
"If you ask me that one more time mister, I'm going to cook this head in microwaves and magnetism so that it won't even make a good decoration!"
"Ok kid, sorry. Just, look, he might know what's going on you know? My girl's out there somewhere, and NC might know where."
"You told me that man, you told me that plenty of times. Just go wait out in the garage, I'm working on him, ok?"
Bindi was somebody's kid. Ok, I know, we're all somebody's kid, unless we're a droid or something, but this kid happened to belong to Red, the Resistance guy I'd sold a whole bunch of explosive to a ways back. Bindi was suppsed to be some kind of genius with droids, so we took NC to him. Actually, we took NC's head to him, because there wasn't a whole hell of a lot else left, unless you count slag and an acrid odor. Spakta had turned a big chunk of him into vapor three days ago.
I could still see every moment of it. Spakta coming out the back door, the goons coming up the alley. I took some grim satisfaction knowing that I'd gotten to kill one of the goons personally, and NC'd gotten the other by blowing his head off... literally. In earlier days, the old Dallet, well, the old Zillik, would have counted his money, and then sold the droid for scrap, then left the area to find a safer market. Zillik was dead though, and the new guy Dallet - me, owed too many people too many things to slink away with his share of the booty.
Foremost I owed Petra my life, maybe more than once. Spakta had her, but I was going to get her back. I owed Spakta too, but I was planning on paying him off as soon as possible. Hopefully with a blaster bolt in the eye, and another one up his ass for good measure. Right now though, I had a more pressing problem.
I had no idea where to go. I had no way to get there, if I'd known.
Probably Tatooine ExtraOrbital Control hadn't even tracked their takeoff vector. Probably I'd never get it, without spending thousands in bribes. I'd have been ok with that; I had cash. But certainly Spakta jumped short, revectored, and then repeated the process a few times to throw of any trail. It's what I would have done in the same situation, and Spakta sure as hell didn't slip up too often. If he harmed her, I'd find a way to kill him a thousand times. The doc that fixed me up was pretty good, maybe he could keep bringing Spakta back for me.

Space

"Dallet will kill you, when I tell him what you did to my hand." She was weary, and beyond pain. The hand was so badly swollen it looked nothing like a hand anymore.
"I doubt it, vutira. Who do you think told me where you were?"
"Right. You told me you killed him, and he cursed me. Get your story straight, slug." She didn't have any energy left to laugh, but she would have.
"I probably did kill him, I shot him in the balls. He told me where you were, in exchange for me not shooting him in the head instead. He did curse you. And he sold you out."
"Sure, slug. He's probably right behind us now, and when he sees what you did to me you'll wish you were dead." "Mayhe he did sell you out" a little voice inside her head said to her. He'd left her for dead once. No, she thought. He wouldn't, he loves me.
"Oh, vutira, you make this so much fun. What ship is he in? How does he know where we are? But you're right, I wouldn't want him seeing what I did to your hand, I'm am so afraid of him." He chuckled darkly. "So very afraid of him." He rummaged around in the toolchest for a while, muttering to himself. After a sharp indrawn breath, he stopped searching, pulled something free of the chest. He set another tool down on her belly, grease and metal dust smearing into her pale skin.
"You're right Petra, I must not let him see what I've done. Thank you for pointing that out." He walked around to her left side again, and picked the tool up. This time, it was a saw, with a wicked rotating blade.
She vowed she wouldn't cry, but she knew she was lying to herself. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the hammer had, because of the previous damage. Dallet, she thought, please hurry, please. Counting it a blessing, she passed out before Spakta was quite done.

Tatooine

"Eh? Mister Dallik? Wake up." The kid screwed up my name, but I didn't care. I must have fallen asleep in the garage. That should have been harder to do, what with all the smell of solvents and fuels and burnt stuff out there with the vehicles, but I'd also spent a great deal of time in a healing-accelerated bacta tank, so I was probably about due for a long nap.
"Can you fix him?" Luckily, I'd had the chance to rehearse that line, so it came out pretty clearly.
"Man, I told you!"
"It's bad then, isn't it? He might be my only clue!"
"Dallik, calm down a bit. Maybe you need some tranq." Not funny, kid, I thought to myself. Maybe he saw the look creep over my face. "Anyway man, listen: I fixed him, kinda. I got him rigged up to a synthesizer and a power source. He still ain't got no body, but his head works alright."
"Can I talk to him?"
"I said a synthesizer, right man? Of course you can." Snotty little...

"Captain Dallet, I have lost communication with the High Tide." The droid's voice sounded the same. Of course it sounds the same, you idiot, I thought to myself. It's synthesized. Droids don't feel their parts, and their voice doesn't change because their torso gets blown away. Droids cope just fine.
"I know NC, Spakta got aboard I think. Can you call it back?"
"It is not transmitting to me. My receiving range and transmitting range are almost identical. If I cannot hear it, it probably cannot hear me."
I cursed. I was pretty good at it, and Bindi seemed thrilled to learn a few new words.
"I believe the Rodian was using a nullifier. I lost connection with the High Tide while we were in the alley. I apologize for my delay in action Captian, my droid brain was forced to invoke several contingency plans to resume operation. I had never intended this unit to be totally isolated."
"I understand En-See. I shot the nullifier though, I disabled it. Did you get a message off after that?" I asked, hopeful but pretty sure of the answer.
"No sir, I had been incapacitated before then, I assume. I have no recollection of the field destabilizing. I have had no contact with the High Tide since before the encounter."
She might already be dead, I thought glumly. She's already dead anyway, if she's at his mercy. Maybe I could buy her freedom, if I had cash. I doubt he'd buy from me, but maybe a front man, using my funds... It was a long shot, and I didn't have that much money either.
"Sir, " the droid interrupted my musings, "it is possible to get refitted? This is very uncomfortable. I have no body. I have no weapons."
"I thought droids didn't care about comfort."
"I suspect some part of my programming has been altered by contingency plans sir. Also, I did suffer a great deal of damage."
"You're saying you're not right in the head because you got fragged? You're a droid!"
"Yes sir, that is correct. In fact I am only 'right in the head' as you put it sir. My head is the sole survivor. Unfortunately some of my programming modules and other logc devices are housed in other parts of my body."
"Great, so I've got a crazed droid head?"
"I have determined no evidence of insanity by any index, Captain." I looked over at Bindi surreptitiously, and he nodded a "I didn't find anything" kind of look at me, so I was mollified.
"Ok, we'll get Bindi to refit you like before, if possible. Anything else?"
"We must hurry sir."
"Of course we have to hurry!" I bellowed, like some body-less droid needed to remind me that my lover was zooming away from me in the hands of a sadistic, radiation cooked mad Rodian. "Spakta has Petra and he's getting further away every second! You think I don't know that NC? You think I don't think about it ievery bleeding second?"
"Sir, that statement is not accurate."
"I'm going to melt what's left of your head if you're calling me a liar."
"No sir, she may not be speeding away from you."
"Spakta's no idiot. He's long gone."
"Captain, I said there were certain contingencies invoked when I lost when I lost communication with the ship."
"Yeah?" Did the droid sound nervous? Was that even possible?
"I had programmed a specific set of actions should my remote be disabled sir, or should anyone attempt a wipe of my core navigational systems."
"Are you allowed to do that?"
"Under Imperial Conduct codes, all droids are bound to obey certain programming methods and standards. For instance, no droid or computer may act directly to cause injury or harm to..."
"I know the codes NC, but they're hardwired in all computer systems. Even being allowed to disregard the law shouldn't have let you do that."
"I am an unusual system, sir. The command to disregard the law was all that was required." That was news to me. So old NC had been planning on me double-crossing him, and had set me a nasty little surprise. How nasty?
"What did you have planned NC? Did the ship flush its air when your remote was destroyed? If you killed her, I'm going to rip your... well, I'm going to wreck you. What did you do?"

Space

"What did he do, Petra?" The Rodian practically screamed at her. He would have been screaming, if his ruined vocal chords could have handled it. It might have been hours, or days, or months since he'd last visited her with the power saw. She couldn't stay conscious for very long now. She'd lost a considerable amount of blood, and when she was lucid she knew she had the beginnings of a fever. Amputation with nonsterile equipment, she mused darkly. Spakta had unstrapped her head, and she only needed to tip her gaze up once to realize her left hand was gone, cut off somewhere above the wrist. She didn't know what she must look like anymore, after Spakta had realized something was wrong with the ship, he'd beaten her soundly. She'd confessed ignorance, and it had been the truth. It hadn't spared her. He unstrapped her legs briefly to torture her in new ways, but apparently wasn't up to the task. That had infuriated him more, and intensified the beating. Oh Dallet, she thought hopelessly. You're too late. He's going to cut me up until there isn't anything left. I'm sorry. "Don't worry about him, " a voice in her said, "he put you here."
"What have you done to my ship Petra? What did you do to the computer?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I swear I don't know."
"I will untie you if you tell me, you know."
"I don't know. I swear it, I swear it."
"You have another hand Petra, the warrant only says alive. Do you want to keep your other hand? You have two eyes too, I have plans for them, and if we get stuck out here, I'll have so much time!"
If she could have stayed conscious, she'd have lied.

Tatooine

"Certainly not sir!" The droid sounded offended. "I merely programmed a round-trip navigational route in case of disconnection. The ship and its Navigational Computer will return to the point of last transmission and attempt to regain two-way communication with my remote."
"And if it doesn't?"
"The ship will inform all occupants that they need to leave. It will then seek to negotiate terms for the purchase of another remote droid unit."
"What if they don't leave?"
"Then the ship may be forced to vent the living compartments, or take other drastic measures to evict the occupants."
"Well well well, my little NC, " I said, tapping the droid head lightly. "Seems like you've got the business of a Trandoshan Standoff figured out just fine. We'll get you a new chassis, and we'll get you talking to the High Tide again. After that, you and I will sit down and talk about some programming modifications."
"These terms are acceptable to me, sir."
"I'm glad, NC, I really am. Because if I don't get her back, I'm going to pay someone to think of imaginative things to do to what's left of you."

"Listen Dallet, I feel bad for you." Red began, obviously a speech he'd thought out ahead of time. "But the bottom line is, you don't have the merchandise that you promised us, and we're going to have to go elsewhere. Nobody's accusing you of anything, ok? We saw what happened to you, we know it wasn't staged."
Staged? They'd considered that it could have been staged? Who 'stages' a fight that breaks plenty of his own bones?
"Of course it wasn't staged. I'm not asking for a handout Red, I just need a couple fighters, and some scanning equipment. We need to sit above the port in orbit for a while, just babysitting. Droid says 2 weeks, tops."
"We don't _have_ any fighters here pal, ht Hutts control the airspace and near-orbit."
"C'mon, who are you trying to kid? You think I haven't sold refit kits here for the last five years?"
"Well, we might have a few, but you can't have them."
"I need a ship, a ship with some firepower. I want an escort. NC rigged the ship to double-back on autopilot."
"Dallet, think about it. All that scumbag has to do up there is think about how to reprogram the ship, he has all the time he needs to bypass the navicomp."
"Sure he does - "
"Like I said yesterday: it's sad, and we'll skin the maggot alive when we catch him, but you have to face the fact that you've never going to see her again. She's already dead man."
"No she isn't!" I grabbed a couple handfuls of his shirt, lifting his weight onto my forearms. I guess the month of exercise had helped. "I would _know_ if she was dead. I would know already. He can't change course midjump. It's coming back. We have a window."
"Ok buddy, ok. Just calm down." He seemed shaken by my outburst. See, in my line of business, you didn't get hot when things went crazy, you got cold. You didn't yell and curse, you got your gun and you killed someone. I'd never grabbed anyone like that in my life, certainly never somebody that big. Maybe I was losing it. "Listen, I know this guy, runs a salvage shop. He might be able to get you set up. We're looking to him for your droid."
"Good, thanks Red. Really, thanks a lot."
"No problem, but you know how expensive ships are, right?"
"Yeah, that's why I usually steal them."

Between the ship, the droid refit, and the necessary lubricant of bribery (the Hutts suddenly became huge sticklers for proper liscensing and vehicle inspection), my nestegg was gone. I let NC handle his own negotiations, again. He'd done well enough last time, and I was too preoccupied trying to wheedle our seller down to something I could still afford, that had reliable atmosphere. My choices were limited.
I ended up with a model they called FL-22, or the FireLance. He said it didn't have its own name, but we could probably call it the Fire Lance... because we weren't likely to find another one in service anymore.
"What, they don't use them for training or anything?" I looked at the fat little chadra-fan.
"Nn-nn-no, nn-nnot ex-x-x-actly." His language skills needed work, but he was a genius with repair and refit. He and Bindi seemed to have some kind of psychic connection. They'd done wonders with NC.
"What do you mean not exactly?" I asked, dreading trying to interpret his answers.
"Nnn-oo-oo-t 'zakly. They u-u-uu-uu-se them in training for t-t-t-t-t-t-tt-..."
"Testpiloting?" I aske,d hopeful and anxious at the same time.
"T-t-t-t-t--t-TARGET PRACTICE." He finally spit out. "They handle like poo-oo-oo-oo-do."
"Oh." I waved Bindi over to translate, I could see my fuzzy little technician was getting antsy.
"They're too long, he says." Said Bindi. "They can't turn fast. Shoot real good, but cruddy maneuverability. Like driving a big gun." The thought of getting the word maneuverability out of the jumbled mess that the chadra-fan had just said startled me. Then I wised up to what the kid was actually saying.
"You're saying it's a bad fighter."
"Yeah, it's a terrible fighter. They went out of style a hundred years ago."
"Tell him I like it, and it's ok. I'm a terrible pilot."
The lousy control characteristics didn't bother me. I'd been telling the truth, I'm no great pilot. It was long enough to have a small living section that would let me stay aloft for long periods of time. It had oversized powerplants to drive the steering thrusters and weapons, so it packed a whallop. It predated the Y-wings, and had a long, single-shaft appearance to it, with its drive thrusters spreading the rear frame a bit. In all, it looked a lot like one of those tools janitorial droids use to sweep things up... a broom. Wide at the back, then long and narrow. The pilot sat midframe, with the guns making up the leading bulk, along with directional thrusters. The rear spaceframe widened enough to allow minimal cargo and living space. I wouldn't have paid a hundred credits for it a year ago, I paid almost a thousand times that much now.

"You got ships' tools in your new configuration NC?"
"Yes sir, along with the... amenities my other frame had."
"You got a spare power supply this time?"
"Three sir."
"Good. I want to make some modifications to the ship, fast. They don't have to be pretty, just effective."
"If I subcontract droid labor from the Hutts sir, I can operate very quickly. More quickly than a sentient technician."
"Do so then, but we only have twenty large left to play with."
"What modifications sir?"
We got to talking about the modifications. The weren't actually expensive, except for the spare thrusters. I had him trim the overall length by several meters, almost a third, and reconfigure the forward guns for a wider spread. We'd lose most of our weapons range, but we'd be lighter and faster. I meant to run away more than fight, so the close-in weapons were for devastating suprise, not for planetary bombardment. We got a bacta-coffin installed back in the living quarters, and rigged it under the bed. If you got tired, you slept. If you got tired from being all shot up and could be hauled into the back, you rolled the bed back and slept in the coffin till you got fixed. The bacta itself was more expensive than the equipment. We doubled up the outlet ports on the nose and aft directional thrusters, giving us a little bit more range of maneuverability. We also rigged a copilot/navigator's station, but it wasn't meant to be used by a living being. It was meant for a humanoid droid form, to be bolted in and interconnected to the ship's computers.
It was NC that looked the most different after the operation though. He had premium parts; we'd paid well, but sometimes you have to take what's in stock. En-See ended up with a protocol-droid frame, which he hated. We had them enamel it black with some blast-resistant material, but he still hated it. He especially hated having his old head attached to the new bodyframe, because the head was proportionally too large, and looked menacing compared to the otherwise well-known and widely-loved 3P0 series of body. I almost laughed myself to incontinence when I saw him for the first time. He had guns still, with a higher capacity, but they were in his arms now. When he showed me their make and installation, I couldn't stop laughing. It was like watching a toy armed with a blaster. Deadly, terrifying, but somehow funny too.

We skipped the superstitious mumbo-jumbo about naming it, and got our wreck into space. NC came up with a good position and vector on the most probable reentry point for the High Tide, and we waited. I'd had NC refit the control cabin. At first Bindi didn't understand why I'd adjusted everything, but then he'd understood. I spent most of my time flying cargo haulers and light craft, never anything this military or oddly shaped. I had NC make the cabin's controls into a perfect (near perfect) replica of an old X118 cargohauler, because I was most at home in it. After only a few hours of almost bouncing us off of other ships, I had a feel for the long, knobby gun that we were riding. Thus I named the ship the Angry Knob. I know, it's a terrible name. I loved it.

Space

Spakta hadn't visited her in a while. She didn't know how long he'd been gone. Could have been years, but she didn't remember eating. She remembered being hot, and thirsty, but not much else. She also remembered that she was crippled and hideous and that Dallet hadn't rescued her in time. She was angry, but mutedly, because she knew she was going to die one way or the other.
I will go at peace, at least, she thought.
"Seems like a stupid way to die," another aspect of her mind said. That aspect suggested she fight. But she had no strength left. The torture, the violation, the deprivation... all these things stacked up against her, and she couldn't take it.
"Weakness, the voice said, is failure. Weakness is death." She liked that other voice of hers, it didn't offer false comfort, it wanted revenge.

"Hah!" Spakta said. "You are fixed, filthy computer!" He chuckled heartily. "I cannot stop us, but you will jump again in 60 seconds after we drop from hyperspace. You will jump to the Baleetra system, I have taken you apart. You must comply."
"Coordinates confirmed sir."
"There is no way you can change it now. This is correct?"
"Correct sir. Reasoning functions offline. Logic functions offline. Personality emulator offline. Self-preservation initiative offline."
"Excellent. When do we drop?"
"Eleven minutes sir."
"And the course, it cannot be changed or shut down?"
"Not as long as I still function." The Navigational Computer was all business.

"Dallet, I am detecting a trace." NC sounded excited. Maybe he was going crazy.
"Show me." The screen lit up. A vessel of the correct mass was distorting nearby space. It would penetrate in minutes. I let the droid handle the gross navigation, I tuned up the guns and precharged the thrusters. "What have we got for shields?"
"Fore and laterals are online sir. Aft shields failed during primary ignition."
"I guess we can live with that, they aren't expecting us."

"Let me show you," said the voice in Petra's head, "how you can get yourself out of this."
"Ok," she said, knowing she was losing it again. It was alright with her, she didn't have any drugs with her to help her lose it this time.
"What you have to do is stop being in control so much. Control is like torturing yourself, just like that pig Spakta does. Do you see?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"Good. Let go some of that control. You feel how angry you are, how hurt?"
"Yes." She whimpered. The voice knew what had been done, the voice _was_ her.
"You feel how strong that makes you now? You feel how angry you are? That's good. Feel it and use it."
"But I'm tied up."
"You are going to be a Jedi. Do Jedi get tied up?"
"I don't know. Probably?"
"No! Jedi know how to use their anger. Feel the wires holding you. Hate them. The wires cut off your hand as much as Spakta did. Hate them. Make them break."
She did hate them. She was worn raw from chafing against them. She was bruised and battered, beaten and her dignity had been shredded. She hated the wires, and they broke. They stung when they peeled away from her, but the stinging only made them snap faster.
"Finally, excellent! You see, you don't have to be weak, you don't have to try to control. Let go. Be angry, it is natural." The ship jostled, bumped, came out of hyperspace.
"Now you can get out of here, but you have to do something first, don't you?"
"Spakta." She said to herself. She could be natural.
"Spakta, indeed. You're learning."

When they dropped out of hyperspace, I put us on a medium speed intercept, and fired our main gun across her flightpath. They call that a warning shot. I call it a distraction. I had one ion cannon with a terrible recharge rate, so while the High Tide's computer tried to figure out what I wanted, and turned on its scanning equipment, I fried everything I could with my one burst. I could try again in thirty seconds... if I needed to. I didn't, they came to a stop.
"NC, hail them. Tell them we're boarding them."
"Sir, we have no universal hatch."
"I don't care, I'll suit up and board them. Tell them I'll blow them up otherwise!" Should have thought of that, I guess. I got up to leave my chair, and get suited up. That's when Spakta woke up.
His 'Tide was maneuverable, we knew that. We didn't expect a controlled two-axis snap turn after he'd been ionized, so the first salvo caught us off guard. My ion cannon took the hit, and it bled some residual back into its own fire-control circuits. I strapped back down.
"Not responding sir."
"Gotcha, let's move around a little. Start setting up some disabling targets."
"Affirmative."
I juked a little. Damn little. I punched us up to full pre-jump speed and stretched our legs a little; we were bloody fast, after all. We couldn't turn very well, but we could outpace everything except an A-Wing, and we had pegged the 'Tide with the ionizers. He tried, but he couldn't catch us. At speed, even my little moves made it hard to target us. Better pilots, or working computers and I'd be dead, I thought. If I don't slow down, I'm going to be dead anyway. I had a trick planned, but I needed to be about twice the pilot I was to pull it off.
"You locked in?"
"Affirmative."
"Hang on, this will be interesting."

Breathe. I flamed out one of our engines, making it look toasted. He got a lucky hit in, and then it really was toasted. Breathe. No rear shields. Breathe, another round, caught the dead engine again. He matched us. My grip loosened on the stick the tightness in my shoulders lessened. My left hand reached out and turned the control damper all the way off; I'd have 100% throughput on my controls, so if I twitched wrong, the ship would tear itself apart. Breathe.
A funny thing happened then. I slid past my meditation, and out beyond the walls of the ship. I could see Spakta crouched in the cockpit as he prepared a salvo that should cook our remaining thruster. I could _feel_ the slew and slip of the High Tide as she started to catch up to us. I could see the inside of the cockpit light up with a familiar green light. I could almost hear the hum. Breathe. Petra! What in the name of...?
Petra had changed.
Her beautiful pale face had been marred by bruises, and both eyes were blood-red, surrounded by ugly purple welts. Swollen, and even her teeth had blood on them. She'd been beaten badly. She's alive, I thought to myself, that's all that matters. I knew it! She's alive, everything else can be fixed. Then I saw her move the lightsaber into the guard position, and saw that she didn't have a left hand anymore. The image wavered, faltered. Breathe. Spakta had to see her now, the light was blinding. She raised the saber, slid up behind him silently. To this day I swear she looked right at me then, and her eyes burned as green and baleful as her blade.
"You're too late, Dallet." She said it in a voice I'd never heard before, as cold and hard as the unforgiving emptiness of space. The image shattered.

Petra saw him, saw his accusing eyes.
"Don't worry about him, pet. He betrayed you before, now twice! How many times must he try to kill you?"
"I love him."
"Control nothing, feel everything. You fear him, he tried to kill you. You try to control him by loving him."
"Maybe, I don't know."
"Worry about it later. Now make Spakta pay."
"You're too late, Dallet." She said outloud, and brought the saber down.

I would have wept, if I'd had time. What Spakta had done... he'd pay for. He might be paying for it right now. I couldn't feel her now, and it gnawed at me. I couldn't feel her because she might be dead. Or maybe she just wasn't Petra anymore. Either way, I'm disabling that ship, and we can sort it out from there.
"Sir? Are you conscious sir?"
"Bolt down, I'm coming about."
"Our velocity... " he began a warning. I stopped listening. I dropped back into my focus, ignoring the other ship, ignoring everything. This turn would need to be perfect... the ship whipped around too fast, too hard for the structure to handle. I let it slide, feeling the centripetal force pulling my eyes out of their sockets. Another rotation, we must look like a top. I couldn't say when I fired the retrothrust, the focus wasn't conscious anymore. I could feel some huge, inexorable Force guiding me, making me do it right. All I really knew is that I fired it and we didn't explode, and I keyed my main gun half a second later. The effect was pronounced, and burned the forward shields from the 'Tide in a single shot.

"Oh, you wish to escape?" She sneered at him. "You have one arm left, Spakta. I have so very long with you..." He whimpered.

An escape pod burst from the High Tide, and I ignored the main ship to chase it. Petra's in there, common sense told me. She'll want to give me a clean shot, but I want her aboard so I can be sure first. It took me some time to decelerate and match it, and maneuver around to bring it alongside. Our hatch wouldn't support ship-to-ship umbilicals, but it would pick up emergency pods. It was going to take several seconds for the airlock to cycle, I started back to the lock.
"Program a full volley for his cockpit windows NC, when we get her aboard, we introduce him to space."
"Sir, incoming signal."
"Tape it, tell him I'm going to blow him up in just a minute. I'm busy."
"Sir, I have also infiltrated the main computer."
"That fast?"
"It has been largely disabled... Sir! The computer indicates an automated return trajectory to be activated in ten seconds."
"Open that comm, override the computer!" A blip, I was on. "Spakta, you maggot, I'm going to find you, no matter where you go!"
"Don't follow me, or I'll kill you." I expected his voice, but I got a violent suprise. It was like Petra's voice, if you let it blow across the glaciers of Hoth for a while.
"Petra? Who's in the pod?"
"Dallet, if you follow me I'll carve you up. You'll never betray me again! Some day I'll be back to settle accounts."
"Petra wait! What are you talking about?"
The ship jumped. She was gone.

The airlock cycled. What was in the pod was still alive, in the technical sense. It breathed, it bled. What had happened to Spakta could not rightfully be described as torture, but more as a kind of obliteration; a writing-over of what he'd been. There weren't any limbs left, the face was gone, the eyes and facial-stalks had been removed and stuffed into a pocket of his flight suit. His wounds bore the cauterized markings of a high-energy weapon, and he might live for hours.
I'd like to tell you that something basic and human in me took him back to the planet for anesthetic, or that I tended mercifully to his wounds, or even that I gave him a coup-de-grace like a worthy Jedi in a holovid story. I didn't. That worthless maggot had taken Petra from me. First my old life, then my new soul. I recycled the pod's door, leaving his blubbering body inside. I was almost numb, but I knew well enough what I'd do to him.
We entered a flawed orbit around Tatooine, and orbital control screamed at us. I didn't want to skip off, and I didn't want to burn up, not quickly. When I'd hit the sweet angle, I kicked the pod loose again. I figured it'd get awfully hot in there for a few minutes before the pod breached and blew up from the heat. Its thrusters had been manually disabled, there'd be no corrective burns. We pulled up clear to good orbit and I followed it around the planet target-synched while he burned. He made half an orbit before the pod ceased to be.
Burn in Hell Spakta, I thought. Burn forever for what you did.
Then I took off my flight helmet and wept like a child.

09-17-2004 06:03 PM

<3

(Dallet Series II)

My name is Dallet GreenStar. Or Dallet-cha, just Dallet, or even Zillik. Depends on the timeline. Everything depends on the timeline, the same way as everything depends on your point of view. At one time, I was a soldier. I served a brief time in the Imperial Army, and was discharged. Even then I was preparing for my next calling in life, as a swindler. I swindled a discharge instead of a court-martial. I muddied the waters of around my infraction, and managed to get out of the service without being shot at (much). After that, I figured out that making an honest living was for honest people, and cheating those honest folks out of that living was my job.
I dealt, and I mean that in as many ways as can be imagined. I set up deals. I sold things, I bought things. I stole things, sold them, sometimes back to the people I'd stolen them from. I made, bought, and sold drugs, spices and narcotics of every variety. Hell, one time I even sold a bunch of drugs to a wookiee, then stole them back from him after he overdosed and killed himself before using much of them up. It suffices to say I wasn't the most honest or genuine guy in the galaxy. In fact, I probably tried to steal something from the most honest guy in the galaxy, or swindle him. That all changed around the second planet in the Dallet system.
I screwed up bad above Dallet-2. Got my (if you consider possession in the broadest quasi-legal sense) ship blown to hell, and almost got myself killed. In more ways than one, I did get myself killed. I got cooked in radiation, starved for oxygen, and hooked on the most dangerous drug ever created... but we'll skip that for now. After the Dallet-2 incident, things started to change. I'd love to say they changed for the better, but I'd be lying, and I try to do less of that now. So after Dallet-2, I changed my name, and I fell in with a woman named Petra Gullings. She's the most dangerous drug created.
See - Petra, there was something about her. Seems her whole life she spent dragging herself through the filth; drug use, poverty, prostitution... but there was a core of her that remained decent and human no matter what she was forced to endure. I almost killed her around Dallet-2; I left her for dead with too little oxygen, and too much narcotic. I'd left her a way to kill herself, and she almost did it. If she hadn't survived that little charity of mine, there'd have been nobody to save me from the radiation poisoning I managed to get myself fried in a quick slingshot-orbit of the planet,in an escape pod minus the appropriate shielding. She did more than save my life though, she reminded me that humans, indeed all sentients, have a responsibility to safeguard one another's souls. She'd told me she was guided by some fool vision. At the time, I thought it was just her way of excusing her human qualities.
She was taken from me, and I'm not sure how. A bounty hunter named Spakta had been tracking us for quite a while (we'd marooned him on Dallet-2) and finally caught up with us. He and his boys beat me witless in a confrontation, and would have killed me without the intervention of my droid associate NC. NC succeeded in getting most of his mass re-randomized, and I got about a dozen bones broken, but we made it. Petra didn't. She'd been back on the ship, formerly Spakta's ship, and Spakta decided he wanted her more than he wanted to stay and finish me off. I almost don't blame him, she was worth five hundred thousand credits if taken alive. Quite a price for my little Petra. That didn't save Spakta. Petra got loose, and sent me what was left of him in another pod. I thought I was rescuing her, and I was really rescuing him. I cooked him off in reentry to Tatooine, and I hope he burned for a long time. I don't know what he did to her while they were in hyperspace, but he screwed her up so bad she wasn't Petra anymore when he got done with her. She was something terrible to see, and she paid him back but good. Then she told me I would be next if I followed her, which is why I sent what was left of him into high-speed disintegrating oribit around this Force-blasted ball of dust I'm on now.

*Mos Eisley*

I knew before he got back to the table he had bad news. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, but most of all I could see it in the fact that he did not have another drink for me. I had clearly requested another drink, in a volume that would have allowed any species with even itty-bitty-baby ears to hear me.
"Your tab is done Dallet, and you're done too. Get out."
"I been drinkin' here for two months Zizzizzigogo and I always pay my tab up full."
"It's Zochi'grogota, human, and you gave us a certificate of credit that bounced. You want to try to crawl out on your own, or should I get the boys to haul your ass out?"
"I can walk jus' fine, Zippy. Let me finish and I'll leave."
"You've been finished for a week. Get out. Now."
So I left. You'd think, in a place as famous as Mos Eisley, that there'd be more drinking establishments catering to a distinguished gentleman like myself. Sure, I'd gone to seed a little after that bit with Petra, but I was bouncing back just fine - I was just down on my luck.
I fed myself that line outside of every place I got kicked out of, and the drunk part of my mind liked to believe it. After I'd been kicked out of two dozen bars, I was pretty good at slinging that garbage. Somewhere though a sober part of me knew that I was poisoning the well; I couldn't expect to deal or work out of these places anymore, they'd remember me. That sober part of me knew what I was doing: I was trying to find a way to drink myself to death. I'd seen it enough times, even catered to it a few times, to know the signs. That alone didn't scare me. The part that scared me, the part that convinced me to hit the bottle early and often, was the fact that I didn't care. Hit the bottle, and quit worrying. It was time to check out anyway, I'd cheated the house a few times, but it was time to cash in. Only nobody wanted my chips. I thought the house always won.
I found myself back at a pitiful hole of a bar called Carkoon's Belly. It was a disreputable place, and I hadn't been in it for months. Right before the recent unpleasantness with Petra, I'd set up a deal in here that had helped get one waitress, one bounty hunter, and two thugs killed nearby, and that's never good for business unless you're the coroner and it's an election cycle. Not to mention the fact that a certain Resistance fighter was shafted for a sizable business investment of time and money, when my deal fell through. I haven't been back in ages, I thought to myself, maybe they'll have forgotten me.
"What'll it be, Dallet? Bliel?" Guess the bartender remembered. He seemed friendly enough. Never trust friendly people.
"Nah, old buddy. Maybe make it something with a little more hair. A sunburn?"
"Sure, this one's on the house."
"That's right friendly of you!" Maybe they were over that bit about the multiple killings and a lot of blasterfire. Sometimes people suprise me with their decency and capacity for sympathy. I downed the sunburn good-naturedly, and smiled drunkenly at the bartender. What was his name again? It took me only a few seconds to realize he'd drugged my drink, and I was going to be blissfully unconscious when his gang beat me to death. This kind of thing really shouldn't have happened to a guy that used to traffic in spice on a regular basis. It was poor form to fall victim to your own tricks. Belatedly I reached for my comm to buzz my droid, but I'd sold the comm a week ago, and hadn't returned any of the droids messages in a month. Oh well, I thought, I get my wish sooner than I thought. Maybe I'll get to kill Spakta again in hell. Maybe vice-versa.

*Later*

A slap threatened to waken me, but did not succeed. The water did the trick though. It's amazing how sober you can get when you wonder how in the hell you can be drowning on a desert planet.
"What the?!" I gurgle-cursed.
"Do you wish to disgrace my school, or my art?" Another slap, and a familiar voice. I was busy getting the water out of my eyes, I couldn't see who was hitting me. Wham! Another slug, expertly delivered, returned me forcefully to what I assume had been a sitting position. "Well human? Do you wish to dishonor my good name?"
Kah. He was here, and he was angry. I hadn't seen him in what seemed like a lifetime. I'd never seen him angry, and I suspect all the men that had seen him angry hadn't lived, or at least had the uncommonly good sense to shut up about it. His eyes had turned a deep red, and were squinted down to slits, pupils all but invisible. His ears had pulled a little bit away from his head, fanning out like a snake's hood, and making him look pretty mean. Truthfully, he'd already looked pretty mean, and the ears just freaked me right out.
Trandoshans are lizard-humanoids. They're bloody big, and they're reptilian. That alone is enough to make most people cross the street to avoid them. This particular Trandoshan happened to be a Master-ranked teacher of an ancient art called Teras Kasi, or the Steel Hands. That art taught him exotic new ways to kill people much stronger than myself with his bare hands, or feet, or teeth. Or foul language, probably. I hadn't studied enough to be sure.
"Master Kah, " I began, hunting for the appropriate angle to play to work him down, "what are you doing here..." I looked around, trying to figure out where 'here' was. "What are we doing here in my ship, I mean?" It bore a striking resemblance to my ship, it was a safe guess.
"I paid the bartender to call me if you showed up. Your droid contacted me weeks ago. I have come to ask you to resume your study." I didn't think lizards could growl, but you learn something new every day. If it was going to be a school-reuniion, why did he still sound like I'd made an omlette out of his brood? And why did I get the impression that 'ask' wasn't the most appropriate verb for his meaning?
"But I thought I was done..."
"Bah, fool. You are never finished with the path. It leads to enlightenment, which is perfection. That is not attainable."
"I don't feel enlightened, " I said, rubbing my jaw.
"You do not look enlightened either. You look like a drunk. You are covered in vomit." I was covered in vomit, how nice of him to notice.
"Well, I'm not going back. I see what good it did Petra." That wasn't a fair statement. Something had twisted her, and she was lucky to be alive. Probably her training had kept her from dying in captivity. I guess alive and sane had been too much to ask for. The blow that caught me happened so quickly, and I was so boozed up, that I swear to this day he didn't move. It was like he reached out and cuffed me along my ear without doing more than glaring at me. Maybe I'd learn that bit if I went back too.
"Dammit Kah! Stop hitting me."
"Make me. You are finished with the training, you should be able to handle me without any trouble." He hit me again. It was blurry, but at least I saw him moving that time. Still rung my bell though.
"I'm drunk, and drugged, you want to fight me in this state lizard? This what you need to win?"
"I would love to take you sober human, but you have been drunk for two months!" Wham, another whack. Inky darkness surrounded my vision, I suspected I'd be taking another nap soon.
I struggled to my feet, assuming a left-forward stance. It's a good stance for a righty like myself. Well, it's a good stance for a sober righty. Slipping your weight smoothly, that was a big thing in a fight, moving but never completely losing balance. Try doing that drunk some time before you criticize me! I slid into the stance pretty well, but I just kept on sliding. I got righted before I fell down, but it felt like my stomach was still headed down. There wasn't really much to bring back up this time, so throwing up didn't take too long.
I stumbled over to the acceleration-couch, and sat down. To my shock, Kah sat down across from me. He stared at me for long minutes, those reptilian eyes peeling back the layers of my drunken psyche, as if his will alone could sober me up. I don't know if his will had anything to do with it, but after a while I started to get clear-headed again. Wasn't a big treat.
"Do you know what you are yet Dallet-cha?" It had been his first serious question to me: "What are you?" I'd answered poorly, I'd told him things I'd done, or things that had been done to me, but nothing that I was. Being something, that was not entirely external. It could exist without the influence of the outer world. I guess I knew a few things about myself that defined who I was. I didn't really like them though.
"Sure Kah, I know."
"Then what are you?"
"A failure."
"Yes, " he began, nodding. It's hard to realize how wierd it was to go from being battered around your ship by him, then engaging in esoteric debates with him. "That is a beginning. We are all failures. We are all successes. We try to be more successes than failures."
"I'm more failures."
"Perhaps so, but knowing where to start is a success. What else are you?"
"Tired. Scared. Hurt." Broken, I thought to myself, but I wasn't going to say it out loud. There's a difference between hurt and broken. Hurt things get better, broken things need to get fixed before they get better.
"Feelings, fleeting. They will pass."
"Sure, the booze helps them pass right along."
"The drinking is a failure. The droid has told me of your excesses. The things will pass as easily if your mind is clear."
"Maybe, but the booze is easier to come by. And what does NC know anyway?"
"The droid informed me that you had drunk all of your available funds. He diagnosed you as having an obsessive post-traumatic disorder, and claimed that you might do something irrational. I have watched you sell your belongings for another drink. I can show you another way to find peace." He was getting enigmatic, as he liked to sometimes. Might take an hour to work around to what he actually meant... unless I short-circuited him.
"What, you're going to teach me to use the Force? You're some kind of Jedi now too?" I figured to rile him up a little.
"I am no Jedi, but I have learned some things from them. I have learned how to hunt them, and it has taught me much about them."
"So what makes you think you can show me what I need to know?"
"Nothing, Dallet-cha. But I know what I can show you, and you cannot possibly think my teaching worse than... this." His arms opened to encompass the little 'lounge' in my terribly ugly ship. The floor was wet with vomit, half the interior lights had burned out and not been replaced, it stank, and it was stuffy. He was right, it didn't get a whole lot worse than this.
"You're right, as usual. I can fly to the school in the morning. Let me sleep this one off." And, I added silently, I think I still have a bottle of 'jump tucked under my cot.
"We are not flying this time. We are walking. You need the exercise. We leave when you are packed."
"Kah, it's like... a hundred klicks to your school. I'll die walking there."
"You might, but we are not going to my school. We will learn, but we will need a new campus." It's hard to tell when a lizard is smiling, but I think he smiled, just for a second.
"Oh yeah, and where is this new campus?"

It took us 3 days to get to where Kah decided we wouldn't be bothered. By this I had to assume 'bothered' to him meant 'bothered' with food or water, or shade, because we sure weren't bothered by any of those things. You'd really be amazed at how quickly the desire for a shot of hard liquor can turn into the desire for some nice lukewarm water. There's water in the desert. They use these harvesting things to draw it out, and condense it, and make it useful to us weak-skinned humans. I raided several on the way to our site. Kah said it was dishonorable (of course, he had scales, which don't leak water like a sieve), but he didn't stop me.
Kah liked the desert. Apparently something about being baked for hours and hours at a time appealed to him. He stripped naked (yeah, I know) and made me carry his gear along with my own. Trandoshans apparently don't have any cultural taboos about nudity. I could see why, they had virtually nothing external to worry about exposing. Well, whatever. Other species were wierd sometimes, and Kah was probably wierder than most of his species. At least someone was enjoying the outdoors.
It was hot, and bright, and dry. Kah had found a deep valley for us to take up temporary residence in, and it provided shelter from the suns most of the time, and was significantly cooler than the surrounding dunes. It was still hot. After I set up the portable vaporator kits, I choked down a dry travel biscuit and set up my shelter.
Some day I'm going to find the genius that thought it was a good idea to include a waterproof shelter for a desert survival pack. The waterproofing make the shelter almost airtight as well, and its dark color made it an oven. It was about as useful as an inflatable emergency raft but at least we didn't have one of them. I cut the tent to shreds on the second day, and used it to make a sunshield. I burned easily now, and even with the super-protective creams and pills the kit had, I was browning up almost as much as my lizard companion.
"Breathe, " he said, again, "and clear your mind." We'd been doing a lot of that. I could do it pretty fast now. Kah said that wasn't good enough, that when I was proficient (not an expert, just proficient) that I'd be living in that void of emotion more than I lived outside of it. I told him I wasn't sure it was a good way to live. He said not doing it was a good way to die, so we stopped talking about that. I just did what he told me. "And, release. Good." I was cleared.
It had helped, at first, to practice the meditation techniques. They kept my attention (or lack thereof) away from the memory of Petra, and it felt like muscles all over my body relaxed when I stopped thinking about her. As soon as I noticed it though, she came slamming back into my foremost thoughts. I could still see here eyes, glowing with the accusation of betrayal. I wanted to go to her, to show her...
Wham. I was slapped upside the head by a large reptilian hand. Kah seemed to think this was more effective than verbal reinforcement.
"Begin again. Breathe."

The protein wafers were boring after the first week. They were gone after the second. I'd taken to hunting with Kah in the 'mornings' (I have mentioned that I can't tell how the day/night cycle works on that bloody planet, haven't I?) and using the leftovers to attract more scavengers to eat by the next morning. Kah seemed to have forgotten about his clothing and gear altogether, and I never once caught him drinking from our 'still. Maybe he's really a droid, I thought. No, droids are more charming.
The days and nights filled with "breathe" and "release". I could blank my mind in a moment, and the flowing forms of the Teras Kasi came to me like thought. They were fluid and perfect. Finally, they started to mean something to me. Each one was a lesson, each told a story, each had a meaning. One told the story of a fool who had overextended himself, and struggled to return to balance. Another told of a hero beset on all sides by giant attackers, bent on crushing his life out. I moved from form to form, and somewhere in there I realized that I could do so effortlessly, and virtually without thought. I also realized I'd learned nothing new since coming to this heat-blasted oven of a schoolroom.
"Master Kah, " I began, "why do we endlessley repeat the same lesson? I'm getting nothing new out of this." This was during one of his rare 'rest' sessions.
"You take new knowledge from every breath. You are nearing proficiency in the opening forms now. You might soon be called 'capable' of meditation, if not fluent."
"I know, but I've learned nothing new about the Teras Kasi way; I never knew that much to begin with, but we keep doing forms I learned months ago!"
"Are you a complete fool? You are not here to learn how to be a Teras Kasi. You are here to learn what I can teach you about the Jedi."
"Then why are we doing all of these stupid breathing exercises? Why hours of meditation, and not enough water?" I hadn't meant to mention the water, but it was heartily ticking me off, being thirsty all the time.
"Now I am sure you are a fool. Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a cluttered mind? Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a whining child? No, these things you must learn to go beyond, and these things I can teach you! Concentration. Discipline. Control. Focus. All these things you lack. You need these, and this is how I can teach them." He almost seemed like he was making his case to himself, not only to me.
"I have plenty of control."
"Nonsense, you are defined by your lack of control. A month ago you were wallowing in your own filth, drinking yourself to death. A year ago you were selling others the drugs to do the same. You are in control now?"
He had a point, I had been a bit out of whack. It was Petra that made it that way, at least recently, I thought glumly. And it was me that made her the way she was now. Stupidity, I told myself, I can't even make my thoughts go where I want them. I'm not here to complain about someone doing something to me, I'm here to learn how to make sure it doesn't happen again. No, that's not it either, I thought. I'm here to learn what I am, maybe even change what I am. When I know that, I'll be able to make that kind of failure less likely. I'll never be able to totally avoid it. Not a great and enlightening concept, I thought, but a start.
"I am in more control than I was."
"This is true, Dallet-cha. Now we will begin again. Assume your fighting stance, and attack my guard."

The next day 'dawned' (which means it got hot enough to cook the rat-meat under a lens instead of in an oven), and we did not resume our normal routine of breathing, running, hunting, baiting, breathing, and so forth. We hiked, in silence, to a pass that took us up and out of the valley. When we'd reached a kind of mesa overlooking our own campsite, Kah squatted down in his meditative posture. I'm in for a long morning, I thought to myself.
"The Force is everywhere, Dallet-cha." He spoke so softly and without preamble that it startled me. I dropped into a crouch before him. "Even the Teras Kasi know this. Children of all species know this, but adults usually disparage them of the notion." Disparage? I thought about getting him some Dosh-to-Basic vernacular datapads, but put the thought aside for later conversation.
"It connects all things, " he continued, "to one another, by flowing through and around them. It can be felt, and sensed. It violates the physical laws you spacers hold so dear." He paused, maybe to let the slow, sun-baked human figure that out. I took it as an invitation for comment, because I'm a smartass.
"Why can't I see it then, why can't it be measured?"
"What does the wind look like? What would you measure it with? How would you measure how much sand is in the desert? It is everywhere, it refuses to be counted."
"Then it's alive? It has a will?"
"It has many wills. I do not know if it is alive."
"So what about a Jedi's will, is it stronger?" His response was a wry chuckle. I think that's what it was anyway, Trandoshan-chuckles seem a bit more violent than the human analog.
"Jedi are among the most willful sentients the galaxy can ever know! They can be arrogant, prideful, egotistic. They are the most in need of control and discipline."
"Why, if they're so strong?"
"They have power, yes, but the power has its own will. Sometimes dark things roam the Force, and that will begins to corrupt the Jedi. If they have no control, it uses them as a tool, they way they would use it. Most of them do not survive, because the Dark Side is a hungry thing and does not care what it consumes. Sometimes though, it has enough cleverness to know when it has a tool of great value, and then that one becomes very terrible."
"Like Vader?"
"Yes, like Vader. He is a great funnel to the darkness, a great failure of self-control."
"Is that what happened to Petra then? She was a victim of this 'will' of the Force?"
"No, Petra was a victim to nothing but her own failure. She was weak when she needed to be strong, she was tempted when she needed to resist."
"How can you say that? How dare you criticize her? What do you know about this kind of thing? What do you know about being tortured and beaten and whatever else that piece of filth did to her? How dare you!" I stood upright, ready to leave. I didn't know where exactly to go, but 'away' sounded pretty good.
"I have killed failures like her before, and loved them every bit as much as I love her. Never have I had a Jedi as a student, and now I have two." I stopped, staring. Kah didn't have human emotions, especially not love. Probably a translation difficulty.
"She was a prized student, Dallet-cha. Just like you. And just like many other Jedi I have known, she has fallen."
"So, it's a Jedi problem now, right? Why would you care?"
"No, Dallet-cha. Long ago, it would have been a problem for the Council, or perhaps for my Teras Kasi brothers."
"If she's as far gone as you make it sound, Kah, she's going to be a big problem. The Jedi will have to come out of hiding for her."
"Dallet, there are no Jedi anymore. They are all gone, all of them. Vader has broken the balance of things."
"But Kah, the vids, the holo-news, there's Jedi everywhere, I mean, they're hiding on almost every planet... they're terrorizing- "
"The Jedi are dead, Dallet. The are dead and gone, murdered. There may be wilders, and untrained fools, but there are no more Jedi. That is why I risk teaching you myself, Dallet. I will teach you everything I know of them, which is scarcely more than nothing. I will teach you how to fight them, because at that I am a mamster. I will show you what must be done, and then you and I will go, student and master."
"Go where?" This was not sounding good. This was sounding long-term too, and I didn't like the idea of long-term in this heat. I didn't like the idea of another ten minutes in it, actually. It would be so much easier to walk away now, and I might even survive the walk back to civilization. I was in better shape from the training than I had been in years. I felt like I was rooted to the ledge though, because that damned Trandoshan was so still and determined.
"We will seek out Petra, and return her to the light. If we cannot, we will destroy her before she can upset the balance even further."
"Man, can we even do that? She looked pretty angry, and I've heard that those guys can kill you from a system away..." I tried to remember what I'd heard about Vader. None of it was pleasant. He was cold, ruthless, and always won. Always. And he usually killed everyone opposed to him in some spectacular and convincing way. "We could get killed trying to - "
"We will not try, Dallet. We will succeed or we will die."

09-29-2004 06:34 PM

<3

Dallet 2.2

Tatooine, Dune Sea

It was two days before I first felt it. Two days of heat, and not enough water to slake my thirst. Two days of "Breath, Dallet-cha" and "Try again, Dallet-cha". Two days of sun, and rotting Womp Rat stew. Two days of that, and I probably would have believed almost anything. But this time, I knew.
"I felt him coming this morning master Kah. I felt him before he came beyond the first dune."
"How can you be sure?" He replied cautiously; there'd been failures before.
"I felt how hungry he was. Hungry enough to eat this garbage." I pointed to our stew. Calling it garbage might have been going overboard. I doubt the Empire would have fed it to Wookiees.
"That may be so, or it may be your imagination."
"Sure, " I said, "but today I saw his tracks before the wind got to them. He made it as far as the dune, then I scared him off when I went to investigate."
"Truly?"
"Yep, I used the Force. I'm a Jedi."
"You are not a Jedi, but it is a good start." He pondered for a moment, and let out the slightest sigh of relief. "It is good, because if you had not made some progress by dinner tonight, I was going to begin beating you."
"You're joking, right?" He's hard to read sometimes. The other times he's impossible.
"Not at all, I had reasoned that perhaps torture would loosen your block." He stared at me with those reddish lizard eyes, flat and dispassionate as only a Trandoshan can be. He might be serious, I thought.
"Kah, how could torturing me possibly help? It's probably what turned Petra, you said so yourself. Torturing would probably kill me, or turn me."
"Going to retrieve her untrained will certainly kill you, I was prepared to take the chance with the beatings."
"Thanks Kah, you're all heart."
"I expect you would do the same for me, Dallet-cha. I am your teacher, it is my responsibility."
"You have one funny sense of obligation." Better believe I'll give you a few whaps if the time comes lizard... I still owe you for yanking me out of the bar, I thought to myself. I thought it _quietly_ to myself, Kah seemed almost to rival the Jedi myths for knowing what was on my mind.
"Now, we will begin to exercise your new talent."
"But I just started eating..."
"You let too many words come out of your mouth when you should have been putting food in it. You may eat later. Learn now."

It came in fits and starts. At first I passed it off as a feeling of exuberance and health. Sometimes I would get a kind of... feel for the canyon around me that couldn't be attributed to just my senses working very well. They did work very well too, which confused the issue some. In fact, my whole body was working great, finally. My skin had stopped burning on a daily basis, and just turned a uniform shade of bronze. Some mornings I could go without a shirt and desert cloak until one of the suns was directly overhead, and not be too bothered by the heat. The baggy skin and wasted muscle tightened, firmed, and transformed into the picture of health. In only a few months, between near-lethal radiation poisoning and Kah's training, I lost almost a quarter of my mass, trading bulk for long lean muscles. I was faster, lighter, and stronger than I had been even in my Service days, and that had been almost a decade ago. I seemed to be able to distinguish colors better, see farther, and listen more closely. I knew rationally that most of it was from simply reducing the volume of the drugs and alcohol in my system, but some of it was something else altogether. Sometimes I felt things happening that I couldn't exactly see, or precisely hear. It was like a kind of intuition, as if someone was getting to the punchline of a joke I'd never heard, but it had a predictable ending, so I started laughing too early.
We had taken to doing some free-sparring practice to warm up in the mornings. The idea was that a few minutes of light contact (which meant mostly non-lethal to Kah) would key up my system for the all-out exhaustive work Kah had in mind. He seemed to figure that being exhausted was the key to being able to pay attention. During one such sparring session, I began to feel as if Kah was purposefully moving more slowly, as if to draw me into predictable motion. Predictable attack patterns are a big no-no for Kah. He says that an expert Teras Kasi will recognize a habit-attack on its second, sometimes even its first use in a fight, and begin to adjust for it. I knew I wasn't far enough along to be seeing his patterns, but I kept getting the feeling that I knew where he was going. For two exchanges I tried to put my finger on whatever sign he must be giving me, but I couldn't. Then I realized there was no sign. I was feeling where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do.
Because I was still lacked fluid coordination outside of the set forms, Kah could still beat me senseless at a whim. He was so fast that sometimes you couldn't see him move, he just stopped being where he was, and started being somewhere else. It was like he skipped being in between. The feeling though, it was like having an edge, so I embraced it. I stopped trying to respond like a trained Teras Kasi, and settled for just not being where he was going to strike. Even that required more thought than my exhausted mind could usually put forth, so I stopped trying to plan an evasion, and just did what came naturally. When I made the conscious decision to surrender thought, hours and hours of endless meditation practice fell away, and something completely new happened.
I did not need to be told to breathe, because I understood it fully. I did not need to think about moving, because I was already in motion. I did not need to avoid Kah's attack, because he was already too late. It was all these things and more. If you've ever had the sudden feeling that you were exactly where you should be, doing exactly what you should be doing... it was like that. I felt like there was nothing simpler in the world than breathing, and moving, and dodging, and there was nothing more perfect or more... 'right' than doing just that.
Kah began to pant with exertion. Of course he did; he could breathe, and move, but for him it was work. For me, it was less than nothing. I was merely doing what I should.
Kah stepped back, staring clinically and catching his breath. He switched his stance to something new, an unfamiliar one to me, and approached again. He seemed hesitant, confused, ill-directed. Some of his strikes were as off-target as a drunken novice's. Some of his attacks left him dangerously open for reprisal. For the first time ever, I managed to score a solid hit to his torso, a kind of token 'tap' that let him know I'd been there. If I'd been consciously directing myself a bit more, I'd have left him more than a tap.
Then, before probably even he knew what he was doing, his leg shot out as he spun, swept me cleanly from my stance, and right onto my bony rump, in the hot sands. The spell was broken, and I felt normal again.
"Well fought, Dallet-cha." High praise from the lizard.
"What in the Nine Hells was that?"
"It was sparring, we were practicing."
"No, what I did, what was that."
"It was what you should have been doing for weeks, learning to stop thinking and act."
"That wasn't normal Kah, that was something else. It was way different than a normal fight."
"Maybe for you, but for a master... "
"It was the Force, I could feel it."
"Yes, " he began, "it was. You fought with the loose freedom my old friends did, many years ago. They were always so graceful, so fast." He sighed. "That is the way a Jedi fights, Dallet-cha. Without fear or worry, without thought or pretense. When he is unafraid, and open to all things, especially the Force, he cannot fail to do its will."
"It was awesome." I was almost giggling with excitement. So many days and weeks out here, and finally something concrete. Well, maybe not concrete, maybe not at all, but something that was solid enough that I could say. I'd scored a hit on Master Kah!
"It is not a toy, it is a responsibility!"
"How did you beat me at the end?"
"Ah-ha! An old trick, passed from one Master to another. It is no secret, but it is very hard to do." He smiled. I think it was a smile, anyway. "The reason you were so much faster than me is because you knew what I was going to do as soon as I did. The only solution is to move so rapidly, and so randomly, that I scarcely know myself what I am going to do; you can learn nothing from me in the Force. I have practiced that aimless form more than ten-thousand times. I need not think about it to enter it."
"Wow. I wonder if I could do that... I don't know, slicing? Or maybe piloting? Or even with a blaster..."
"Jedi do not use blasters. It is dishonorable and imprecise."
"I use blasters, I'm good at them."
"You are also good at using drugs, do you wish to remain so?" The lizard had a point. Some of the things in my previous life weren't all that hot.

Like I said, it came in fits and starts. I was brutally exhausted after that first fight, and Kah let me sleep almost six whole standard hours afterwards. Then we meditated. We meditated standing, and sitting, even running. We meditated before a fight, and after, and sometimes I could pull off his 'no-mind' trick during a fight, and lapse into that wierd prescient state, but I couldn't do it every time, or at will. It came and went. One night we went back up to the ledge, and meditated there for many hours.
"Tonight I am reminded of my old Jedi friends, those whom Vader has slain, and even one I myself had to kill. I will meditate and think of them, and of things lost. I advise you to do the same."
I answered only by nodding, sometimes speech wasn't warranted. I too remembered things lost, and as the awareness of the here and now drifted away from me, a memory from years earlier encroached.

(Before)
Kessel

"Zillik, my old friend!" He wasn't my friend, but then again who cared? He had product, and I had need. He was a slimy sort of guy, but this place attracted all sorts of slimy people. I felt at home.
Wuda was what you might call a shipping coordinator, in the civilian vernacular. He managed a space docking facility on an asteroid near the Kessel Spice Mines. They pulled kilogram after kilogram of glitterstim (or its unrefined component) out of the mines, and they needed to sell it somehow. Usually, a Hutt took care of large transfers, workforce management, and any 'difficulties' with pirates or law enforcement. There wasn't much of either on a regular basis; the Hutts were geniuses at knowing when to bribe and when to shoot. This applied equally to pirates and police, they were both alternately on the take or on the hit list. To the Hutts it didn't matter which, because they saw both as a business expense. To me it didn't matter either, because I had an 'in'. Wudo.
He knew how many crates of glitterstim the Hutts expected to see coming out of his facility. He delivered that, and he was paid for them. Some months he made more, and he didn't bother to always let the Hutts in. I'm sure they knew too, because if information can be bought, they've usually gotten a bid in before you. Anyway, Wudo sold the overages, and I bought them at a greatly reduced price. Why, you might ask? Well, for starters, I didn't love the Hutts. I was ok helping to skim from them. Second, I wasn't going to take the hit directly if the operation went down in a fiery ball. And third, I cut that glitterstim so much when I made it into product it was almost all profit. Hell, two or three runs like this, and I would actually be able to afford the new YT I'd been drooling over for almost a year. It looked like baked bantha-crap, but the room for 'modifications' and the engines' thrust-per-ton ratio was an invitation to a hungry smuggler.
"Wuda, you have what I came for?"
"Sure, sure, old buddy. Why don't we have a drink first?" Always a good way to conduct business, in my book - if you're sure to cut it off before you get dizzy. It took a lot to put me under a table in those days.
So we drank. We chatted about things decidedly not work-related. It was a lousy enough bar that nobody would have raised an eyebrow had we offered to buy Wookiee slaves on the open market, but we were professionals, you see. Not only that, but the slavers a booth over looked like they were awfully eager to sell, and it's not that I had any real problem with slavery, but it wasn't my business, you see? Maybe they knew Wudo, I thought mildly.
"I have this problem, Zillik. I think the Hutts are on to me." Nothing new, Wudo was a paranoid maniac when things were going too well. Between the booze and the paranoia, he gave himself ulcers. He self-medicated with booze and a synthetic stim every few hours. Every few months, he got professional treatement and managed to put off dying for little longer.
"Yeah? You've been saying that for as long as I've known you. You must be pretty clever to slide by them so much." Flattery helped sometimes, but usually not once the buyer and the seller were old partners. Hey, I thought, it can't hurt.
"It's different this time, they sent someone by last night. Someone I couldn't buy."
"Oh yeah? Hunter, or a leg-breaker?"
"Hunter, some guy I never heard of before. Not in the normal registry."
"I won't even ask how you got in the registry to check. He for real, or is he just shaking you down?" Extortion of criminals is usually a lucrative prospect; they rarely go to the authorities. They never go to the authorities here, I don't even think we have them. Messing with that kind of thing can get you shot though, so I like to minimize it.
"He's for real." He held up his left hand, several of the fingers were badly broken and hadn't been set properly. Damn, I thought to myself. How could I have missed that?
"What's he want?"
"An accurate production and shipping record."
I whistled. Wuda might be pretty screwed, this time. Either that or our Bounty Hunter was going renegade and had himself a clever idea to get some royalties out of Wuda. He was going to make Wuda give him his own blackmail evidence. Smooth.
"You got your local guys on it? Maybe he could have an accident..."
"My team went silent last night. Either he bought them, or he 'accidented' them, but they aren't helping." I started to get a bad feeling...
"What do you want with me Wuda? Listen, maybe we should just get the deal done, and I get out of here."
"No, no, wait... you're my only friend now Zillik, you have to help me."
"No way Wuda, I have a thing about bounty hunters. I get the hell out of town when they look at me."
"Yeah, well maybe some day you won't get to run away, like me now. I got a good thing going here, and it could make us both rich! But only if I'm alive to pay you."
"Yeah, but neither of us can spend credits dead, buddy."
"It's a foolproof plan, listen..."

I listened, it certainly wasn't foolproof. Wuda had purchased a Twilek slave girl a few hours earlier, and she was undergoing some modifications while we were having drinks. Wuda wanted someone, namely me, to set up this 'Hunter with a 'gift' from friend Wuda, as a gesture of good faith. She would have a datapad that said the manifest and production records were being prepared and would be delivered in the morning. Until then, the girl was free to be used as he saw fit. The girl of course wasn't what she seemed, but Wuda wouldn't describe the precise nature of her 'improvements', but I gathered they'd be lethal to the bounty hunter.
"What about the girl Wuda?"
"Well, she'll be a write off, just like the explosives. I'll take it out of my cut of the deal though, don't worry." Damn, I thought, that was cold-hearted. Still, it wasn't my half, and I'd keep an eye on him to be sure.
"When do I meet him?"
"Two hours, up the tunnel at the 'Refractive Index'. Nice place."
"He'll know it's me?"
"Nah, he'll be expecting someone though."
"Yeah, sneaking up on a jumpy 'hunter in a strange bar with an exploding girl, that seems like a brilliant plan."
"I'll make it sixty-forty, Zillik. Better than half of this month's take."
"Seventy-thirty."
"Sixty-five, or I can try to send the girl on her own."
"Fine Wuda, sixty-five thirty-five. You welch and I'll send you an exploding boy."
"Done. I'll have it put aboard right now. Pay in glitter alright?"
"Just what I wanted. Now where's this girl?"

"I don't know what he did to me mister, but I feel all sore inside."
"I know kid. Drink this." She did, and seemed quiet for a while. It helped not to look at her, because when I looked at her I saw a reflection of myself, mixed with her vague hope of figuring out what the hell was going on.
"Now I'm all warm and sore. It's better though."
"Yeah, does it for me. Most of the time." I downed a double, and waved for another. It didn't last long either. I was more than buzzing when the Bounty Hunter entered the bar. I was drunk. I stumbled over, all obvious-like. You do not sneak up on guys with guns, especially when the only load you're carrying is a gut full of Vasarian Brandy.
"You the guy looking for Wudo?"
"Maybe. Did he send you?"
"Yeash. He sent this." I fumbled the datapad out real slow, the guy watched my eyes the whole time, not my hands. Wierd. Spooky, because his hands had gotten under the table without me noticing. One thing I did notice was my charge, the twilek girl (whose name I hadn't even been able to ask) sliding slowly off her barstool and righting herself. She did it probably three times while I was handing the datapad over; she was crocked too.
The human hunter looked over the datapad, eyes hooded and hard to read. I was going to sit down next to him, but I decided that'd be really stupid, even drunk.
"He sent me a drunk twilek whore?"
"Well, she washn't all that drunk when we got here. She was nervous. And she's not a whore, she's a slave."
"Yeah."
"Honest. She's new."
"Listen here, slimeball. I don't know what you two maggots have cooked up, but I'm not buying it. I'm going to take that manifest and make a bundle of credit with it. I don't want his filthy whores. I just want the money. Take her and get out of here."
"C'mon, she's already bought, she's all yours."
"Get out of here."
I was halfway out when I realized I hadn't told the girl what was going on. I went back in to tell her to try going to sit with the nice man. She was just coming from the rest room. Must have been throwing up the Brandy. Lightweight.
"Listen honey, you just go over there and sit with that man over in the booth, ok? Be nice to him, he's holding your marker." I turned to leave.
"Mister, you have to help. I think something's wrong, I don't feel good and I was just sick in the 'fresher. I need a doctor. He said I wouldn't feel sick for long."
"No you don't, a doctor did that to you." I said it before I thought about it, one of my prime failings.
"Maybe a new doctor, it hurts really bad." Sheesh kid, can't you see you're already dead? This part is just the intermission. That's pretty cold, I thought to myself. It's also poor business, to be seen in here with a bounty hunter and an exploding twilek. People will remember. Wudo will have something on me. Maybe that's why he didn't do it himself. I walked back over to the booth where the hunter was.
"I told you to leave. I have a warrant in this territory, I could kill you and forge a mark for you afterwards."
"Wudo ain't going to give you that manifest."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"The girl's rigged to blow."
"I told you I wasn't interested."
"No, I mean she's rigged to blow up!"
"You vermin rigged a living person with explosives?"
"Wudo did it... it doesn't matter. Here's the bypass code for the dock. It'll get you past most of his security. Give me an hour to get the hell out of here, and he's all yours."
"Sounds like a trap to me."
"It sounds like one to me too, but all you got to do is look at that screwed up twilek girl over there to know I'm not lying." I had no idea why that was some kind of logical proof, but it sounded a lot better when I was drunk.
"If you're lying and I survive, I'm going to feed you to my hounds."
"Buddy, if you survive that means I don't have to deal through Wudo anymore."
"Point. Fine, I'll try it. One hour."
"I'm out of here."
"What about the girl?" Crap, I thought. What _about_ the girl?

"Here, uh, darling, take this chit and get to a doctor. A real doctor."
"I don't even know where I am, or where a doctor is, please help!"
"Listen sweetie, I'm not a very nice person, ok? You've been set up, and they put something inside you that's making you sick. If you don't go get it out, you're going to die, ok?" I was talking to her like she was an infant, and she was obviously much older. But we were both drunk, so I figured it was about right.
"But-" She was going to start crying.
"No buts, kid! Get your ass in gear, and get out of here." With that, I slapped her hard on the rump and practically bolted down the tunnelway. I never saw her again. When I got to my ship, only half of the agreed-upon cut of glitter was in my bay. I gave it a hard look before deciding it was enough. Fair enough, I thought; Wudo cheats me, Wudo gets to keep the change. Left it with the 'hunter for you, old buddy.

Never heard what happened to either of them. Took me a month of snooping around to make new contacts, and it was expensive. I tried to steer the conversation away if anyone wanted to talk about Wudo. Haven't heard from him, I'd say to them. Tried to get some news about the girl, see if she ended up making her own tunnel the hard way or not. No news was good news, I guess.

(Now)

It's hard sometimes, to learn what a heartless heel you've been. As I faded back in to consciousness, my eyes felt sore and swollen, I might have kept them open for hours. I blinked to try to clear them, and settled for leaving them closed for a few minutes. Almost I drifted back into a trance. Wish I'd stayed to get you to a Doc, kid, I thought to myself. Wish I'd done a whole lot of things differently.
I drifted for a few more minutes, when suddenly a vision came of its own accord. A wavy, hazy, kind of image, as if seen from high above.
A droid, and peering with a long metallic neck over a drafting table, watching someone work intently on something. Whoever was working on the table was hunched low over it, peering intently at something. The image resolved, and the figure sat up straight. Twin purple lekku, long and healthy, were brushed back over her shoulders. She said something to the droid, who blanked the drafting table and trundled off. She looked up near my vantage point, and I got a good look at her eyes. Same eyes, without the drunken confusion. Same eyes, with a decade of healing behind them. She smiled a big healthy smile to someone else I couldn't see. She'd lived.
I smiled too, as I came back to the here and now. I smiled despite the flat gaze of my Trandoshan teacher. He was already glaring at me.
"What have you seen that makes you clown like this, Dallet-cha?"
"A girl."
"Always it is a woman with you, no? Was it Petra?"
Petra, I thought. I wish it had been.
"No, Kah. I don't even know her name."
"Typical. Are you ready to begin?"
"I'm ready, Master Kah." I tried to keep the sigh out of my voice. Still, I thought to myself, if I could be a good guy then by accident, what could I do tomorrow if I actually tried? I let the thought sustain me that day and many days to follow, and it was good.

09-30-2004 07:04 PM

<3

Dallet 2.3

Tatooine, Dune Sea

"Smell the sand, and the wind, and the rocks, " he said, calmly and for about the billionth time. "Feel the wind and sun, the heat above and below, and be them. Breathe when the wind blows, and empty your mind. Think of nothing, except the stones and sand and wind. Be these things instead of yourself. This is how to hide from a Jedi." Kah seemed certain about that, but he wouldn't tell me what proofs he had that his little philosophy worked as advertised. I tried to tell him that philosophies like that are just like drugs and spaceflights. All trips are considered successes until the moment of impact. After that, apologies to the passenger are no longer meaningful.
"Like I said Kah, I'd hate to have to test it the hard way. Besides, I'm not particularly concerned with being invisible to Jedi so much as oh, I don't know, learning how to _be_ one."
"Proof, your kind always needs proof." It didn't seem so much a condemnation of me so much as a resignation. "And I teach you what I can, Dallet-cha. I am no Jedi. I know a little of them, and I know well how to hunt them, so I teach you these things."
"I hope it'll be enough." I wasn't being contrite, I was being sarcastic. Some folks like my dry sense of humor, but Kah's was so dry that it seemed to double back on sarcasm. We were in quite a pickle though, and we both knew it. The desert was peaceful enough, maybe even provided me with a good place to get my feet beneath me and learn, but we both knew I wasn't staying here. Kah wasn't didn't know enough about Jedi to be a real instructor, but in a galaxy that had a 'shoot on sight' order out for Jedi, he was about as close as they come. I frequently asked myself what kind of drugs (or the painful lack thereof) could lead me to the belief that this was a good idea, or that the training would be enough. The businessman in me knew it was a very risky investment.
"If it is not, then it won't trouble either of us for too long, will it?"
"It's times like these make me wish we were back in a city, near an honest bar. I could use a drink, " I said. I guess it wasn't really his fault so much anyway, and he was doing his best to help. In fact, he was doing a damn sight more than I would have done for him when we first met. I didn't like him then, and my opinion hadn't improved all that much. It had hit a low point when he'd had me drugged and then proceeded to pound some sense into me (quite literally) before our little foray into the desert. I respected him, I admired his determination, but 'like' was going a bit far. Besides, this was the same guy that had calmly considered torturing me as being possibly beneficial to my training.
"You may have your wish, Dallet-cha. We have come to be within a few hours' walk of a town. We may purchase some supplies there, perhaps learn something of recent events, and prepare for more training time."
"More time? How long do we have to stay out here?"
"Until you are ready."
"How long till then?" I couldn't help it, I was being petulant. Neither petulant or sarcastic works particularly well with the ladies, and I should have figured it wouldn't work with Kah either.
"If I had to guess, I would say no more than five standard years. Possibly less, but you are a very slow learner."
I said something that doesn't bear repeating about his lineage. I guess that kind of thing doesn't bother reptiles so much. Five years? I didn't like to contemplate five more days.
"In any event, my student, " he continued when I'd finished ranting, "we may find you a sordid watering hole. But first I will wander into the desert and hide, and you must find me. I will take the water with me, as an added incentive. You will see that my method works."
I knew it was futile, but I said the bit about his mother's mother's vocation again, and he ignored it again. Mostly. He spilled about half of the water out onto the sand, and re-capped up the 'still's catchbasin. I wasn't dead certain, but he might have been smiling when he did it.

"Sir, " the weary man said to his slightly less weary commander, "I've got them again, this time the lizard is moving closer." He lowered his macrobinoculars, and slid backwards down the dune's leeward side. His voice was very low, pitched only to carry as far as his comm and the Lieutenant at the bottom of the dune.
"He won't find us. They split up?" The officer's already creased forehead furrowed into another frown. The desert had etched lines into his face the way the wind ate away the weaker strata of rock along cliff faces. What was left might not have been as smooth and pleasant as before, but it was well tested and durable.
"No sir, the Lizard took the supplies, and the human is just standing there." He paused, thinking as furiously as his tired brain would allow. "Maybe they're on to us, and are splitting up to spread us out." He looked to his frazzled commander, weariness ground into his faded uniform (the parts of it that were standard issue and not civilian garb) like the uniform brown of the desert.
"They're about the lousiest spies I've ever seen, it they're spies."
"Yes sir, but what else would they be doing out here?"
"I don't know, maybe they're on a religious retreat or something. Lots of people come to this ass-backward planet to do a lot of different things. They certainly do enough meditating."
"Yes sir."
"We're fighting to protect that, don't forget it. It sounds stupid, but if Palpatine has his way, that Trando'd be wearing a slave collar, and the human would be working his assigned profession, on his assigned planet. Oh yeah, and we'd all be dead; shot for traitors." He laughed, real mirth edging in around hit bitterness.
"Yes. Sir."
"It's alright corporal. Leave them be, maybe they'll start fighting again. What's the pool up to?"
"Hundred and five credits sir, but only Sifer backed the human. Rest of us figure the Lizard for crippling or killing the other guy first."
"Heh. Put me down for ten on the Trando too, he looks like one mean scyk. Human moves pretty well, but the Lizard looks like one of those tsa-tsa snakes when you tick them off."
"Sure sir. Ten on the Trando."
"If they turn back towards the town, let me know. We take them if they move to make contact with civilization." He chuckled again. "Such as it is, anyway."

Kah was, as bloody always, right about the invisibility trick. Mostly right, anyway. My senses were good, when I was off the sauce and clear of the Muon Gold most of the time. They'd recently gotten a whole lot better when I'd learned to listen to something new. Much as I'd hated the idea, I could feel the truth of the situation, and I could sense beyond my strictly natural talents. I couldn't do any of the stuff that the holovids show all the time, like when they murder people from a system away, or when they pull ships out of orbit and make them crash into planets. I couldn't corrupt decent folks' minds... well, yes in fact I could, but there was nothing unnatural about that; just good old fashioned temptation. Who knew how much of that was propoganda and how much was real, but I knew I couldn't do it, none of it. But I always have had one hell of a kind of sixth-sense, and it was getting keener.
I could feel the little animals in the desert when they came out of their secret places to hunt one another. I could almost see them, even in the dark. I could hear the more dangerous predators, dull minds made sharp with the thought of nearby prey. I could usually feel Kah as if he'd just cleared his throat behind me, or tapped me on the shoulder. When we fought, sometimes I could even feel what he was thinking, sometimes I knew where he was going and how to be out of the way by the time he got there. I still hadn't won, but I'd given him a hell of a lot more fight than someone with my few months of training had any claim to.
That night though, I couldn't feel him. In the general sense, I knew he was nearby. He couldn't have gotten that far, and I could still vaguely sense his wary and imposed mental silence. It came to me without direction or distance though; he could be anywhere. The thing he couldn't account for though was the animals.
Animals don't like it when you mess with their territory. I don't suppose we do either, as sentients. I remember rigging my first apartment with a few strands of micro-wire, would have been quite a painful surprise for anyone trying to enter without proper knowledge of the setup. I don't think anyone ever did. Anyway, the animals knew where Kah was, and they were nervous. Or angry, or curious, as they ranged in size and predatory capacity. They made no attempt to mask their feelings about us intruding upon their territory. Some of them looked upon us as dinner delivering itself. They could smell me coming too (did I mention that I hadn't seen a shower, sonic or otherwise, in a long long time?), but I was expecting that. I began to piece together a kind of mental picture of where the animals were either nervous or simply gone, and used it to track him. You'd think that the desert is mostly vacant, but it's home to a whole host of strange and wonderful things, some of which might not consider you a food item or plaything. Since a big chunk of the food chain involved carrion-eaters, I smelled like a feast to most of the population.
As I wandered down into a sand-bottomed ravine, I could begin to feel the other margin of awareness from some high-lurking bats in their aeries, watching me approach lazily. They were not disturbed, meaning that Kah hadn't left the valley. Meaning I had found him, despite his assurance that he would be invisible to my fledgeling powers. Oh, victory would taste almost as sweet as the remaining water.

They were a ragged bunch, to be sure. Most of them had traded their immaculately clean uniforming for some hybrid native gear, and it made them look more like Rebels every day. Commander Tarq was not best-pleased by the situation, but he was a pragmatic man. His squad's most appointed lieutenant had met with an unfortunate accident on his third patrol. The replacement didn't even make it two trips, but died to a hostile sniper after a disagreement with Sergeant Debs, better known as VK-441. Apparently the sniper was a good shot; he'd fired only once, on a clear night. He'd fired from a concealed position that handheld scanners could not probe, meaning he was at least two kilometers distant, perhaps more. Perhaps much less though. Debs knew better than to let his men be ruled by some scatterbrained idiot in the field, and Tarq learned quickly enough that the squad was not above exterminating a shoddy officer. Tarq sometimes led them himself, but mostly he let Debs run the show; the squad had never failed, was rarely pinned down or required support, and almost never lost an enlisted man. They chewed up officers like a bantha chewed fodder, but they were about the best commando unit that the Empire could field on Tatooine. They had to be, they were operating with their hands tied most of the time.
"Your report, sergeant." Tarq was letter-perfect when being observed by his underlings; he tried to set an example for them. In some ways they took notice, in others they disregarded. The wearing of nonstandard apparel was one of the little things he let slide, but it still bothered him. At least Debs still saluted when he reported, and if his display of respect was an act, it was a damned good one. Solid man, that Debs, thought Tarq. Solid and dependable when there's a spot of dirty work to be done. Might want a bit for some diplomacy and manners, might be impossible to bring back to civilized society, but a good man in a tight spot.
"Sir. No contact with active terrorists to report. No intelligence suggests they are even in this sector."
"What about that information we... " How best to phrase that little encounter, thought Tarq, for the posterity of droid recordings? "The information we ah, obtained from the Jawa natives in sector G1?" Obtained. The only thing Tarq knew for sure about the fiasco in G1 was that he didn't want to know anything about it. Four Jawa mangled in an 'agricultural accident'... on a planet that boasted little or no agricultural industry, let alone equipment.
"Their information might have been outdated Sir."
"Certainly it might, Sergeant. This is what you are paid to ascertain."
"Sir."
"What about the two subjects we observed last night?"
"We are continuing surveillance on them Sir. Would you like them apprehended? For questioning?" The last added late, asking for a tacit approval for 'questioning' methods that Tarq could not openly admit to.
"Negative 441. Observe them only, and report if they do anything illegal or suspicious. I want human eyes on them at all times, with the damn flyover blockade in effect, I don't trust the satellites."
"Very good Sir."
"That will be all, Sergeant."

"You did very well by finding me, Dallet-cha. A pity your senses have not yet grown to allow you to find us some more water."
"Sure. A pity." I hadn't actually seen him drink any water in my entire stay out in that oven of a training ground, but apparently while Kah was 'being the sand' he got a powerful thirst, and drank all the water. All my water.
"A true Jedi could no doubt supply us with more water. Not to worry however, we will be able to make Buzzard by nightfall."
"Buzzard?"
"The town. The town with the bar you so earnestly desire."
"I didn't think birds made it this far into the desert. Why call it Buzzard?"
"A local story perhaps? We should get moving, Dallet-cha."
The walk would have been dreadful had I not spent so long becoming adjusted to the desert. Walking on shifting dunes is tricky and tiring, but I'd been doing it so much over the last weeks that I was getting the hang of it. While I walked, I let my mind wander. It was getting easier and easier to drift off into something like meditation these days. I didn't know whether to blame the training or the lack of food. Either way, it was getting to be second nature. We walked, sometimes Kah would tell me a fable about some great Jedi Master, usually one who'd fallen from honor and favor into some kind of corrupt villainy that needed to be dealt with by the Teras Kasi. Not the brightest of subject matter, but an important lesson to be sure. I'd felt the lure of drugs and the peaceful oblivion they promised, I imagined that the Dark Side and all its subtle seductions would be much like it. Later I'd learn just how wrong that supposition was.
I still had a problem though, and it obviously bothered Kah. He was no Jedi. I sure wasn't, but I needed training, badly. Kah could, bless his frozen little reptile-heart, train me expertly in how to _kill_ a Jedi, but held nothing save fables and witticisms about actually being a Jedi. Well, that and an unhealthy respect for them. I personally didn't want anything to do with the notion of glory and power and fame, but I wouldn't mind learning something that would give me an edge. I also wouldn't mind doing a little right once in a while to help repay the debt I owed Petra, even if she was far away or dead. Or worse.
Petra. I missed her and I feared her at the same time. She'd known things about me that she never let on. She'd wrapped me tightly around her by saving her life, then snapped and run. Part of me hated her for being weak, and it made me hate myself more because I knew she was stronger than I was. I learned what I learned, I sweat and toiled and burned so that I could become whatever it was that was required to get to her, and... and what, I thought, rescue her? Like some bloody princess in a bloody fairy tale? Like one of Kah's fallen Jedi? Nah, I thought, just like Dallet. That's all, and that's all it needs to be. This new awareness was a little awkward at times, and harder to predict than drugs, but sometimes it just stepped in with a powerful feeling of 'you're doing the right thing' and I relaxed, and stopped craving the booze. Mostly.

I was pretty relaxed when the shooting started. I probably would have felt it earlier if the shooters had felt strongly about me, and really wanted me dead; I picked up on that kind of thing fast... but to whoever pulled the trigger, I wasn't anything but a target. Nothing personal, I thought, but BANG.
I didn't consciously dive for cover. I was already there when my mind caught up with my gut. I reached for a gun. I hadn't brought a gun. I don't think I even owned a gun anymore. I really, REALLY need to consider bringing a weapon with me, I thought wryly.
"Master Kah!" I shouted, no response. I figured the old stealth game was pretty well screwed, so shouting didn't bother me. Kah should have figured that out too, so his silence was a bad sign.
"Stand up, walk out, and put your hands up where we can see them!" A voice, human, probably male.
"Sure thing, bantha-freller."
"We mean you no harm, come out with your hands up and you will not be hurt."
"Like my buddy Kah? I don't think so. Why don't you come down here and we'll talk about it?" I doubted I'd actually get to see anyone before they figured out that they could just drop a few grenades into my ravine and collect what was left over afterwards. It was worth a try though, and maybe I'd get a chance to see how badly hurt Kah was. My suspicion was that he was dead though, and it bothered me.
"We just want to talk to you, ask you some questions. Come out now and there won't be any more shooting."
It's wierd, how little I liked him, and how cold I started to feel when I thought he might be gone. Shot in some senseless hold up or scan, probably by some idiot kid who barely knew how to use a gun. If I'd been trained properly, they never would have gotten the drop on me. If I'd been trained properly, I thought, I'd be yanking their asses down here head first and beating them to a pulp. My gut grew colder still. Kah was undoubtedly dead, and I could hear my would-be assassins moving on the shelf of the ravine, probably in preparation for the previously mentioned detonator-party, or a better shot at sun-baked-smuggler. I drew in some deep breaths, hoping to steady my nerves and figure something out. If only I'd been just a little bit better. Still nothing from Kah, he couldn't be ten paces away, I should almost hear him breathing, or thrashing about. Nothing. I suppose a Jedi would have been skilled and calm enough to reach out with the Force and realize that Kah was merely unconscious, but I wasn't a Jedi, and I sure as hell wasn't calm. Somebody'd gone and killed all the Jedi, and left me in alone in the dark. I blame what happened next on that, since it's easier than blaming myself.
I stood up, gut turning over like I'd swallowed a canteen full of iced brandy. A voice at the end of the ravine, the closer end said something to me. I didn't translate the sound into words. I felt the oxygen exchanging in my lungs. I felt the fueling of my muscles, the pumping of my blood, the power of the machine that was me. I began to walk towards the voice. It wasn't a man, it was a woman. A distracting thought for another time. She lowered her gun, said something to someone up above. She must have thought I believed her story about wanting to talk. More's the pity for her, at least I'd get to close with her before someone realized I wasn't compliant and submissive; I was angry, thirsty, and looking for payback. One of the boys up top must have realized pretty early on that I wasn't going to step forward and have tea; I felt his anxiety spike (I must have felt he was a man too, since I never saw him to get his gender) and fired. I wasn't there where the round lanced into the sand, I'd already moved on. Same with the second shot, and the third. By the time one of them smartened up enough to lead me a little bit, I was on her.
Kah would have done it better, I'm sure. Kah would have been more fluid and graceful, but Kah wasn't so hot at dodging blasterfire, so I did it my way. She already had her gun climbing to address me, but it was pitifully slow, and I was so terribly fast. The faster I moved, the faster I wanted to move. I slid by the gun, slapped the muzzle aside as if it were an insect. I slid by the arm, twisted it on my way by. The muzzle twisted in, then up, pointed briefly at her face as it registered fear and shock. The gun spun away from her hand; it was a human response to me breaking the wrist. Part of me, a large part of me, urged me to twist it further, cripple it forever. It wasn't that I had any objection to it, you understand, but it just seemed wasteful. I wanted the time it'd take to do that used in other ways. Things like trying to figure out where the next shot was coming from. The impressions of shock and ill-intent were humming into me, feeding my churning gut. I released the broken limb as I slid in to position behind her, hand already snaking over her shoulder and around her neck. My left hand, still stinging from slapping the muzzle away, came around to provide the anchor for a very effective choke. I tipped her head forward, and hung my wieght on her neck. It gave me time to look around. Some calculating part of my brain told me to keep her in front of me, she'd make a good shield. I suppose that should have bothered me too, but at the moment it didn't.
There were four muzzles pointed at us, and the two forward men had already started to move out in a flanking motion, to get a better shot at me. I was sliding back slowly to counter them. I could see Kah's shoeless, clawed feet sticking out into the ravine, his upper body had fallen behind a rock. Strange, I must have had to step right over him to get to the woman, and I didn't remember it.
Don't worry about it, I thought to myself. Just squeeze and squeeze until this one is dead. Cast her down, pick up her gun, and kill the others. You owe them for Kah. The cold fire in my gut raged, and the twisted logic appealed to me. I might even have done it, if Kah hadn't chosen that moment to sit up groggily, and look about. My chokee was just about done for, she was going limp. The other men stared hate right through me, but didn't want to shoot the woman. My grip slackened. Kah wasn't dead? I still had her in front of me, but I'd given her enough respite to get her bearings.
My intended victim apparently had enough breath left to yell.
"Shoot, you idiots!"
And they did.

In the darkness that followed, Petra came for me. Later a medic would tell me that all sorts of things happen to the human brain when it has been shorted out by blasters or stunsticks. I guess I knew all that already, but it didn't make the vision seem any less real.
Her eyes had changed. That shouldn't have been a shock to me, she was on the run from the Empire, on the run from us, and I suspected on the run from herself. Her eyes said it all. They say that some of the newer protocol droids can identify a person who's undergone extensive reconstructive surgery, based on a combination of historical data and biometrics. I say they're bunk, because if someone can program a droid to do something, someone else can program another droid to interfere. Such is the way of things. Petra had it down though, and she wasn't trying. Petra hadn't changed one whit so far as biometrics were concerned, but looking at her I knew there was damn little left of the woman I knew. Or thought I knew, anyway. The color wasn't different, the spacing, the eyes were identical. But they weren't, there was something foreign and malign in them. Maybe it was a tightness of the skin, maybe the degree of a squint, the angle of the head, the ambient light, some trick of the shadows, or some of that industrial-strength cosmetic paste... maybe it was a lot of things, and my rational smuggler's mind knew a dozen ways to make a face look a little different without leaving signs... but she'd done nothing. There was a hardness there, a cold surety that put me on edge. I wasn't sure why, but I thought immediately of the image of two large ships docking, and the metal airlock-rings slamming together to form a spacetight seal. Her eyes had all the implacable strength of that union, and they made me feel like I'd just thrust my hand in between the rings as the gap snapped shut. Two blunt steel blades closing, rending...
"You don't know what you're playing with, Zillik. You and the old fool should get out of it while you can."
"Petra, what happened to you?"
"Nothing that I wouldn't have done myself, if I'd been left alone long enough."
"What the hell does that mean, where are you?"
Her eyes started to burn, like metal caught in reentry. "I told you not to try to follow me!"
"I'm not, just tell me where you are! Are you safe?" In retrospect, I know it sounded stupid. Remember I'd been stunned into oblivion, and confronted by a vision. I was not playing my A-game.
She approached. She was cloaked in some billowy kind of clothing. I got the impression that my mind didn't feel it was important enough to fully visualize. Into her hand sprung a lightsaber, blade red and angry.
"Petra, please! I just want to..." She closed in, and my feet were welded to the floor. She raised the saber, thrust it towards me at eye-level, sinking at the last moment a few inches. I began to block, but knew my hands would do nothing to the blade. I tried to step away, but couldn't move. She eased foward, an inch every heartbeat. She slid the saber into my open mouth, I tried to turn away... she laughed. My tongue boiled away, my teeth charred and burned, the blade slid into my neck...

"Lay back down, Dallet-cha. You have had a bad dream."
"Thirsty, " I croaked out, "throat hurts." I looked around. Adobe walls, adobe floor. Sand outside the window. Same desert, same planet, same hunk of nowhere.
"Yes, I would imagine it would. You have been asleep for several hours, and would not wake to drink."
"She stabbed me." I drank some of the water he proffered. "She stabbed me right in the mouth."
"She did nothing of the sort! She was stunned right alongside you!"
"Not her, " I said remembering the woman in the ravine, "Petra. I saw Petra."
"Perhaps you should rest, my student. Your system has endured much today."
"What about the other woman Kah, what happened to her?"
"Sergeant Pemwik? She recovered hours ago, although I gather that she will be quite some time living the situation down."
"Huh?"
"She had to order her own unit to shoot her, so they could detain us. Not exactly a command performance on her part."
"Who is she? What unit?"
"Oh, I thought you realized. They are a local attachement of the Rebellion; they're the Resistance. They've been following us for days."
"Why?"
"We were training in their patrol area. The did not wish to bother us until we turned for town. We might have been spies."
"Great Rings! Where are they holding us?" Kah was laughing, a rare thing for him. "What's so funny?"
"Dallet-cha, when I explained things, they apologized profusely and offered to get you medical assistance. I had them bring us to Buzzard instead."
"Why not have them look at me, wake me up?"
"Because I needed to think about something, Dallet-cha, and Miss Pemwik needed the attentions of a doctor more than you did; you broke her wrist."
"She was trying to kill me."
"She was not, she meant what she'd said about not shooting you. It matters little. I question your use of that technique."
"Master Kah, I did the technique perfectly."
"I saw you in action Dallet, I have had no more proficient student."
"Thank you Kah, that means a lot. So what did I do wrong?"
"I do not question your talent in the technique Dallet-cha, I question why you needed to resort to violence at all? And why persist when I was obviously unharmed?"
"I... I was so angry. It was so easy, and you were shot, maybe dead..." I rambled a bit, but wore down fast. My throat still ached.
"I see, Dallet-cha. It has started more quickly than I could have imagined."
"What did?"
"The lure of the Dark Side, Dallet-cha."

10-19-2004 05:30 PM

<3

Dallet 2.4

Buzzard, Tatooine

"You say your name is Dallet Greenstar. It is not listed in the citizen's registry." The woman spoke with a precise kind of clip, a tone that brooked no nonsense. She probably had to practice it a lot. You just got the feel from this one that she was only a few breaths away from saying something that made her... so beautifully normal. But she never let her mein slip. She was all business, straight backed and straight-laced. Still though, I thought pointedly, her eyes just look like they're ready to let you in on the joke, her lips like they want to crinkle up into a laugh.
"I'm not a citizen of Tatooine." I shrugged. That part was the truth. My name really was Dallet too, I guess, but it hadn't always been. In fact, up until a few months ago, it'd been Zillik. Zillik was a bad sort. The jury was still out on Dallet.
"What's your business in the Dune Sea then, mister Greenstar?" I would have sworn to you at the time that she was making fun of me, or maybe making fun of herself. There was just something under the surface, something not quite tangible, but a powerful impression. Always the cynic, I tuned it out for a moment, and relied upon my dealer's instincts. I'd made plenty of drug sales to no-nonsense types, the sort of business folk that nobody suspects of being addicts. People were an open book, if you knew what to look for. So I looked.
Frowning lips, furrowed brow. Probably because I was just staring at her instead of answering her question. Let her stew. Set of the shoulders told me she was tired. Clenching of the jaw said she was starting to get angry. Stiffness of posture implied that she wasn't the buying type. She probably didn't have the weakness of character that makes some of us addicts, and the rest normal. Or maybe we addicts were the normal ones, and the others were just unusually strong. Still, my drug-dealer's mind saw nothing to be happy about in this woman, yet I had the overwhelming impression that she was a fountain of happy. Why? I finished my cursory examination of her (I lingered on certain spots, I've been in the desert with a naked Trandoshan for weeks, you can't blame me). I noted an oddity on her right arm.
"What's that on your arm?"
"It's called a cast, you moron." Smuggler-Dallet would have been offended, but I was still getting the sense that there was no ire in her tone, that it was all show.
"What the hell? Kah said you were going to see a doctor." I didn't have to feign concern.
"I did see a doctor. This is what I got."
"What, was he out of mud and leeches or something? By the Nine Rings, I thought they only used casts when they couldn't saw the limb off or drive away the evil spirits." Doctors have droids and probes and wierd words and funny clothes. Doctors do not put things in casts, or brew potions over a fire. This resistance movement must be in worse shape than I knew, I thought to myself.
"I'm allergic to bacta, if you must know. I'm allergic to all the medicines with bacta in them. So I get a cast."
"Cripes. That sucks. How long, days?" Days would be a long time to be down with an injury. Most droids could fix up minor breaks like that in a few minutes.
"Six weeks."
"Six - lady, I'm really sorry about that. I didn't know."
"I know that. Kah told me, you've told me. Maybe next time when you hear 'come out with your hands up' you should consider not trying to kill the people trying to help you. Idiot." Ok, maybe the bubbly personality was finally tanking. The wrist obviously hurt her. I did something completely out of character and shut up. It didn't last forever, but I guess it could have been called a respectful silence.
"Hey, wait a minute! What are you doing on a battlefield if you can't be treated?" Seemed like an honest enough question, but I could feel her resentment flare up hot... must have been a touchy subject.
"I don't know, maybe it's because I think this war is a hell of a lot more important than just me." Well, I thought. Maybe she's had this argument too many times. I chose a different tack.
"Didn't they give you any painkillers?"
"Only kinds with no bacta and nothing illegal. You know what those are good for?"
"I heard if you feed enough of them to a rat you can give him a buzz."
"Yeah, " her shield cracked, just a bit, " well, they don't do squat for me. And this hurts like a gronda sat on it." Her eyes, green by the way, were equal parts blame and hurt. I could sympathize, a little. She really had been pointing a gun at me when I snapped her wrist, it was pretty justified.
"You got a first aid kit around here?" I asked, a plan coming together.
"Yeah, but there's no painkillers in it."
"That's fine, if it's got sprayderm, little solvent..." She pointed it out, I opened it. This was a very informal interrogation, perhaps I should have explained that. We were in a little hut quickly assembled from locally available material... adobe or static-bonded sand, for those of you who have yet to be cheated by an architect. It had windows, and a door, and a central room not much bigger than a 'fresher cabin on a luxury liner. Ok, maybe it was a little bigger than a bathroom, but damned little.
"Here, hand me one of your mini-painkillers." She did. We were seated on opposite sides of a table, in that little room. At least we were out of the sun. We were in a town called Buzzard. It was called that because some genius had encased a buzzard in carbonite and had it mounted above the only well in the vicinity. Who encases an ugly bird in carbonite on purpose? Who even does it by accident? The ugly thing was encased upright too, a tall cylinder with a long black neck and head, complete with beak and beady little eyes. The other side sported a large Buzzard's rump, tailfeathers spread in an eternal fluster.
In any event, she was making sure that my story matched with Master Kah's story about what we'd been doing in the desert. Due to a little lack of communication, her team had stunned the hell out of Kah, making me think he was dead. Something snapped in me (something not good) and I attacked the woman. Her name was Pemwik. Something Pemwik. She hadn't introduced herself. I crushed her painkiller (a pitiful little single-doser) into dust, and mixed it with some solvent. I poured the slurry into a bottle-lid, and let it evaporate. While it was doing so, I decided to play interrogator.
"I didn't get your first name, miss Pemwik."
"Sergeant."
"I'm sorry, I didn't get your first name _Sergeant_ Pemwik." Sticklers for titles never impress me. Kah doesn't get upset when I forget to call him Master, and he could kill me with one hand or strong language.
"No, you can call me Sergeant if Pemwik is too much for you. I only tell my friends my first name."
"I said I was sorry about the wrist." I mumbled the last while I emptied the liquid suspension from a sprayderm applicator. Got to love these military kits, utilitarian to the extreme. I poured the slurry in, and some more solvent to liquify it a bit more. I rolled the applicator back and forth quickly in my hands, trying to get it warm enough to aid dissolution.
"I.. what are you doing with that, anyway?"
"Making you a huffer. Ever done one?"
"Hell no, I don't use drugs!"
"I used to. Lots. I try not to now."
"I'm not going to use that, it's illegal."
"Pemwik, you don't look like an idiot to me. You saw me making it, does it look like I just dumped a kilo of glitter in it?" Listen, I know it must have sounded like a common argument for drug-dealers to use on prospective clients... because it was. I'd probably used it fifty times before. Usually at that point I'd slip into my famous 'listen, this isn't costing you a credit.. you don't like it, you don't have to pay' speech, but I wasn't trying to get her addicted, just a little less uptight.
"Where did you learn to do that? What exactly did you do?"
I decided to let the origin of my professional expertise slide by. Plenty of time to tell her about it later, and the interrogation table, informal as it might be, was probably not the best place to admit to habitual drug manufacture, sale, and prolific use.
"Most of that pill was stuff called a binder. There's almost enough medicine in it to do what it's supposed to, but the binder makes it into a pill. That way it dissolves slower in the gut, and takes longer to affect you. That'd be fine if they didn't give you this itt-bitty baby tablet, but it makes this one almost worthless. So I got rid of the binder, see?"
"Is it dangerous?"
"It's a drug, they're all dangerous."
"I'm not using it then, you could be poisoning me."
"C'mon Sarge, you've been watching the whole time. Do you really think they load these first aid kits up with poisonous crap?"
"How does it work? I mean, how do I take it?" She was still rubbing her wrist. I wanted to tell her that rubbing wasn't helping, and that most of the pain was probably coming from her own tension and muscular strain... how in the nine hells did I know that? I knew how to make drugs, how to jury-rig applicators, but I was no doctor. It was just like being able to feel her nature beneath her mask of professional scorn; I could feel the strain in her wrist the same way I could feel that she was still nursing a headache from the stunning beams.
"Well, two ways. First, we spray a little right on to the skin near the wrist. The skin's thin, there, and you don't have hardly any meat on your bones anyway."
"Food gets a little thin sometimes, " she said angrily.
"Consider it a compliment then. Lots of women pay money to look that good."
"Whatever. What's the other way?" Guess you have to turn the old 'charm' on pretty thick for angry broken-wristed interrogators. I let it drop.
"You spray a shot into your mouth or nose while you breathe... it gets to the lungs and into the bloodstream faster."
"No way."
"Listen Pemwik, just try the wrist first, then tell me if you want the rest for the headache."
"I didn't mention the headache. Who told you? You were supposed to be isolated."
"Nobody told me, but I got stunned too, remember?" Well, that should cover it, I thought. Got to remember to sort what I should know from what I do know. Maybe another lie would help. "But I can tell you have one anyway. You don't strike me as someone who goes around angry all the time, no matter what you want me to believe. Must be the headache."
She elected not to comment, and sprayed some of the concoction onto her wrist. She stared at it blankly. A whopping 3 seconds later she spoke.
"It's not working."
"Palpatine's Ass woman, give it a few seconds... here, let me see." On an impulse (one that mght have gotten me shot had I not broken her gun-hand's wrist) I grabbed her wrist across the table and started to work the drug into the skin below the cast. I could feel my own fingers going numb, maybe not my brightest move. She stiffened for a second, obviously realizing that she'd have to get her gun out off-handed. She must have realized that I wasn't going to perpetrate any more acts of violence upon her person, because she relaxed. She seemed to enjoy the numbness. Maybe she even enjoyed the closeness, but I wasn't getting any real impression from her. Of course, several seconds later she remembered that I was the criminal, and she was the interrogator, and snatched her hand away. I winced for her, it probably would have hurt even with the dermal painkiller.
"Where are you a citizen of, Dallet Greenstar, and what is your business on Tatooine?"

"Alright, " Commander Shedfall said, "you and your student are free to go. I remind you to be careful out in the Dune Sea. Aside from the heat, lack of water, native predators, and sand people, there've been reports of increased Imperial activity in the area. I sincerely doubt that they'd let a little 'misunderstanding' like the one you folks had out in North Gulch go without a firing squad. If they even let it get to being a firing squad, and they didn't execute you on the spot. We investigated a little interrogation of theirs a while back... they practically shredded a few jawas alive just to find out where we might be operating. Nothing deserves that treatment. You take care out there, and you never saw us. Even if you did, we won't be here by the time you can report."
"Sure thing, Commander." I decided to skip my customary snarkiness and go for polite. Since I'd struck out with Sergeant Pemwik, maybe I could score some points with her boss.
"You'd best be moving on then, gentlemen."
"Certainly, Commander, " Kah said, "may we take the time to purchase some supplies from the town?"
"Sure, and if they don't have it, let Sergeant Pemwik know. We're overprovisioned since our last skirmish, and we're going to be leaving some behind anyway."
"It is much appreciated Commander."
"Just make sure you don't have anything with our ident numbers on it if a patrol spots you. It'll earn you a world of trouble."
As we left, I felt the Commander's hand rest on my shoulder. Funny, I hadn't _sensed_ that one coming. I turned to look at him. He had a sense of solidity, a bearing that bespoke supreme confidence and capability, but it was pretty well hidden beneath his pseudo-military uniform and exhausted demeanor. He looked like the desert had gnawed on him for a while and spit him back as too tough to swallow. Even durasteel can be etched by acid eventually, I thought, and this guy's been in the vat a long time.
"I thought I recognized you son. You sold one of our men some explosives a while back. Said you traded squarely with him."
"I might have Commander. I don't discuss my business with strangers though, no offense."
"Understood son, but it puzzles me why the second deal fell through."
"Deals fall through all the time," I said, noncomittally.
"No, Red noted in his report that you were solid, and dependable. Red doesn't make mistakes in judging character. He used to work in recruiting for us, and I think you can imagine what kind of recruiting he did. His notes say he considered giving you the pitch, but that you let a bigger munitions deal take a dive."
"There were some problems, Shedfall. Lots of problems. Did he tell you I got all busted up?"
"He did."
"Did he write in his pretty little report that I got my 'bot fried all to hell, and my ship stolen? Did he note that my girl got kidnapped too?" I was starting to get angry, being taken to task by a stranger. Even a benevolent stranger.
"He did, Greenstar, and it sounded pretty serious. There was some other serious stuff on there too."
"Yeah? Like what?"
"Like you being a raging alcoholic, like you murdering someone in orbit."
"I didn't murder him, he ejected."
"Sure he did. I'm sure he sent his own pod into a burn-orbit too. Do you realize that the pod came down not ten klicks from here? Or what was left of it anyway. With the Hutt no-fly zone in effect, that little intrusion caused quite a stir."
"Gee, I'm sorry I made so much trouble. Did Red happen to mention that the guy in the pod tried to kill me? Re-peatedly?" I emphasized the last, probably because when I get angry I seem to develop a negative people-skills rating.
"He's very thorough, son. He covered it."
"Maybe he should have been an accountant instead of a terrorist."
"Maybe you should have been a comedian instead of a murderer. Or a drug dealer. Or a drunk."
"Whatever. You said we're free to go?"
"You are."
"Good, I'm gone."
"Just wanted you to know I've got my eye on you, son. Whatever Red thought of you or might have told you, I've got the measure of you. I don't want to see you around here again, ever. My boys just forgot how to set for stun. You understand."
"Roger that, Chancellor." I snapped him one of my best field salutes. My old Imperial drill instructor would have been proud.

Debs saluted Tarq crisply. Tarq returned the salute as crisply. He must have information, Tarq thought.
"Foward scouts reported in sir. The two possible spies were intercepted by our elusive Rebel patrol. There was gunfire, but it appeared to be a confusion. Our men held back too far to be sure, but they noticed that one of the two men appeared to be unrestrained, and not a prisoner. Later scouting reports confirmed that both men are alive and well, and free in the village of... " he looked down at his datapad "Buzzard in sector G2."
"Very good 441. Very good indeed. I trust you have assembled a strike force?"
"I have taken the liberty of doing so sir, and they await your inspection." Tarq was pleased, Debs was following the letter of propriety.
"That will not be necessary Debs, I trust your inspection will suffice."
"Yes sir, very good sir. By your leave then, I will take the town immediately, and question Rebels and sympathizers alike."
"Affirmative VK441. Catching them in an information exchange may provide us with a wealth of data about their spy network and other operative cells in the region. I only wish we had air support."
"Not required sir, " Debs interrupted, "reconaissance indicates a light force, no more than a patrol group, probably one officer and a handful of men."
"Sergeant, I believe that this region is infested with sympathizers and that they are subjugating the loyal servants of the Empire. Make an example of them. And do make sure that your men are properly attired this time, I want no confusion as to which side we are on."
"Certainly sir. I understand completely sir." It was poor form to smile when addressing a superior officer, so Debs didn't. But he wanted to.
"Commence immediately then Debs. I hope to note a commendation in your record by nightfall."
"Sir." He saluted again and left.

"We ain't taking any supplies from them." I was being stubborn, I know. The old Dallet wouldn't have cared where the help came from, but I didn't want anything to do with Commander Shedfall's goodwill. This whole sense of shame over being called something that I actually was... it wasn't exactly pleasant. No wonder so many decent folks turn to drugs to cope, I thought. Kah either didn't hear me or was ignoring me. Again.
We were in a storehouse, Pemwik acting as quartermaster and security for the excess stores. It was a slightly larger version of the rounded sand-hut that Tatooine seemed to sprout wherever people stayed too long. The larger central section was dug out deeply so that supplies were stacked from several feet below to several feet above the entry level. They did seem to be well provisioned, for a unit that endured sporadic hardship.
"Why all the spare supplies, Pemwik?"
"Why do you think, Greenstar?"
"Maybe your accountants aren't as hot as the Empire's?" I was back to being witty, I knew I'd struck out with her. I knew the Petra issue was still hotly contested, but I am a man, and men like to know where they stand with attractive women, even if they have no intention of... well, you understand.
"Or maybe we took withering fire and lost a third of our sun-blasted unit, you idiot!" Oh, I thought. No wonder everyone was so tense. Before I could say something else stupid, Kah climbed partway back up the ladder from below to argue with me.
"Dallet-cha, be reasonable. There is food and water, and a more efficient vapor-harvester. It will enable us to stay afield far longer." Oh great, I thought, just what I needed. More time afield with a naked lizard. Maybe if we were really lucky we could land a few pounds of the tasteless protein-nutrient that actually made sun-baked womprat taste good.
"And they have protein bars, much simpler than hunting, " Kah said pleasantly. Oh yes, I could see it would be another thrilling adventure. "You do not need to eat them if you do not like, Dallet-cha. But you must carry them, because _I_ like to eat them." Another of his rare and generally unpleasant lizard-chuckles. As I arranged my thoughts about what Kah could do with his protein bars, I turned back to the low arching doorway. This was not going to be a pleasant journey. Maybe I could get in touch with NC, hammer out some kind of arrangement... I stepped back out into the blistering sun, and leaned back against the doorway.
Kah could take what he wanted, and I'd carry whatever he asked, because in the end I needed the training if I wanted to see Petra again. I drew in a resigned breath, and it caught in my chest as I looked down the wide street. Not a hundred meters down the street, a pair of Stormtroopers ran across the street, crouched low as if they were about to take fire. I backed into the hut slowly, trying to convince my lungs to process the air and let it out. We were in trouble.
"Dallet, stop." It was Pemwik. I'd almost backed myself into the supply-pit.
"We've got problems. Big problems. Where are the guns?"
"The Commander didn't say anything about guns, just gear."
"There stormtroopers outside." She had the nerve to give me a look that asked if I was joking. When she figured out that I wasn't, I felt her anxiety spike with my sixth-sense. Great, I thought, just great. Now I can be nervous for both of us.
The ever-stoic Kah had climbed the ladder to stand behind me.
"A shame, " he said wryly, "that we didn't leave without these supplies. We might be gone by now." Like I said, sometimes he was so sarcastic even _I_ didn't think it was funny.

"Yes sir, understood sir. May the Force be with you." Pemwik was talking into her comm, then stripped the thin wire from around her neck and set it down. Maybe she thought she wouldn't need it.
"What'd he say?" I'd been hoping Shedfall would own up to us being prisoners and that maybe he'd negotiate for our safe passage.
"He said you were still free to go." Guess not.
"Thanks, that's very kind of you both."
"Actually he said that I had permission to shoot you both if it looked like you were going to make contact with the enemy." She crouched low in a window, moving side to side to try to get a better view of the street. Kah and I finished moving another crate up to block the doors. Once in place, I yanked the power cells out of the anti-grav pallet lifter, and it sank to the floor with a dull thud. A few hundred kilos of dead weight in front of the door ought to slow them down.
"That's funny, Kah just said I was allowed to break your other wrist if you stopped being so friendly."
"I said no such thing, Sergeant."
"I know Kah, " she said with a half-smile. "Maybe if someone hadn't screwed up my arm, I'd be in a better position to fight!"
"Well maybe if you hadn't shot at us-" I was interrupted by the dull thud of an explosion. Seemed to be on the other side of the town, because I could feel it as much as hear it.
"So really, what did he say Pemwik?"
"He said I was to shoot you if you game me trouble. And give you a gun if you wanted to fight."
"We want to fight, " I said. Even if I hadn't made up my mind, or formulated my plan, having a gun was a good idea.
"We will stand by you." Good old Kah, I thought. Couldn't blame him though, his people had no spare love for the Empire. Pemwik fixed us both with her penetrating glare, trying to figure out if either or both of us was lying. Probably hard to do in my case, because I hadn't decided yet.
"He's going to flee, double back on them when they find his headquarters. The explosion was cover for his escape."
"Where are the guns?"
"Crate marked 'Rations - Cold Weather'," she said. "Ammo's in the bin marked 'Pediatric Supplements'."
"Clever. Kah-" Kah had disappeared, I looked around quickly. No, he hadn't gone, he was on his knees in meditation. "Master Kah, now may not be the time..."
"There is no better time, Dallet-cha. Clear your mind. Become one with the..." I tuned him out. I grabbed two blaster rifles and a dragged the bin of ammo-packs over to where Pemwik was crouched in the window. She was staring at her cast, a worried look on her face. I started to load the rifles, and then had another bright idea. I started working on that too. At least we had plenty of arms and munitions. The bad part was, I thought grimly, that we have so many because we don't have enough soldiers to carry them.
"I'm sorry about the wrist Pemwik, really."
"I know, Dallet, I know. What are you doing to your rifle?"
"Taking off the compensator and the laminizer."
"Put them back on, they need to be on."
"No," I said as I worked, "they make the ammo pack last longer. I doubt I'll need it. And the laminizer makes it shoot farther without dissipating. I don't think I'm going to be doing any sniping."
"What happens if we have to move outside?"
"I noticed we aren't hurting for spare rifles."
"Hm. Alright. Do mine when you're done."
"For a price."
"A price? Are you out of your mind? I really am going to shoot you-"
"Your name, Sergeant. That's all. If I'm going to be fighting with you, I want to know your name."
"Fiti. Fiti Pemwik."
"Nice to meet you, Fiti. You have any of that huffer I made you left?"
"Of course, I told you I wouldn't use it." She stared at her cast, loathing it. She started battering it against the adobe windowframe until is cracked and came apart. She peeled it away, and flexed her wrist painfully.
"Good thing you kept it. Put some on, and save us a hit. I think we'll need it."

Apparently the Supply Depot either wasn't known to the Stormtroopers, or wasn't accounted a major target. They moved in quickly enough, and right past us. I wanted to squeeze a few shots off once we had some targets, but Fiti overruled me. She said to let them get turned away, we might get a volley or two into them before they knew where we were. The more time they spent guessing, the more time Shedfall had to get away. The more time they spent guessing, I thought quietly, the more time I have to wonder how smart this is. My odds of fast-talking a Stormtrooper weren't that great, but the odds of surviving a firefight with a squad of them were not what I'd call attractive either. I could shoot, of course, I'd had the same basic training they had, but my most practiced battlefield skill was knowing when to get the hell out of the mess, and that skill was fully awake right now. Get out now, it said. Pemwik would be great bargaining power. Turn her over, maybe even use her as a distraction, Kah could slip out the back door... Kah wouldn't go for it, I was certain. And Pemwik, Fiti, she wasn't going to go easily. Neither did she really deserve it. For a moment I wasn't crouched in the window of a dusty little storehouse on the galaxy's most useless planet - I was sitting in the captain's chair of my private ship, negotiating the exit-path from Kessel. In my mind I could see only the bewildered eyes of a Twilek slave girl, a living thing we'd been prepared to use as a trap for another living thing, a bounty hunter. Even then I'd picked the lesser of two evils, and sold out a former partner. Everything has a price, just sometimes the bills don't arrive for a long time, and they've gathered a lot of interest.
I knelt beside Kah, trying to lose myself to meditation. It wasn't happening. I went back to my window. Half an hour ago I'd been getting read the riot act by some self-righteous Commander who wanted me gone. Now I was acting as his bait. Fate is a boomerang. A bladed boomerang.
"Here comes the main force. Only a squad." Fiti sighed. Only a squad. Sure, just like a Rancor was 'only' a Rancor. Like two of them could really eat you any faster than one could alone. "Wait till they get past, " she breathed, bringing the stock up to her cheek, "and then nail them."
"Dallet-cha, replace the power cells in the lifter units. I want them to be able to get in here."
"Great Snake, Kah! Why?"
"Because in here I can use the Way on them. Out there, I must rely on foolish weapons."
"Plug them back in Dallet, park it so that there's only enough room for 1 to squeeze in at a time. Better yet, let me set something up." Her eyes had a dark gleam in them, and she pointed me back to her spot in the window once I'd recharged the sled. She floated back into the doorway, but almost three feet off the ground. She turned the pallet-lifter around so that the control pad was facing her roost, and locked it on stationary hover. One tap to the big red button, someone gets crushed, I thought. I'm starting to like her.
"You get overwhelmed Kah, you let me know. I'll shut the door for you." She spoke, then resumed her sniper position. "Now," she said. I had a bead on a slightly taller trooper, as he walked briskly away from us. I breathed in, then halfway out, just like the instructors used to say. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, freeze. Bring the reticle back... squeeze, squeeze, ZAP. One more death on my hands. This time I had the added bonus of feeling him die, and feeling the reactions of his compatriots as they dove for cover. Fiti tagged the guy next to him, who went down but wasn't dead.
"Welcome to the War, Dallet Greenstar, " she said, and finished him off.

It didn't take long for them to circle around and start searching building to building. Our first shots had been relatively anonymous, so they didn't know exactly which building we were in. The town wasn't very big though, so a search wouldn't take long. We sat silently, keeping an eye on the window while Kah stood patiently beside the floating crates. Our first customer opened the outer door, but must not have liked the look of the barricade. I could hear him calling for backup. No fool this one, I thought to myself.
It sounded like there might be a pair of them outside when the first one crawled in. As his rifle and hand cleared the bottom edge of the sled, Kah went from dead still to blurring motion, dragging the soldier in bodily and seperating him from his rifle. There was a snapping sound as Kah broke the arm, a grunt, and then a thump.
The white-shelled soldier went down like an ionized droid, and Kah resumed his position as statue just inside the door. The troopers outside attempted to contact their ally, to no avail. I suspected that comms wouldn't reach where he'd gone, but I didn't have any firm beliefs about the afterlife yet. The next guy opted not to crawl in helpless, and instead rolled a grenade of some kind in. Clever, I thought. Kah was just slightly faster though, and kicked it back out the door. Fiti actually giggled.
Boom. Scratch two more, maybe three. Guess I could kiss my Imperial Citizen of the Month hopes goodbye. I hit the big red button and dropped the barricade back in to place.
"What?" Kah asked surprise registering on his reptilian features.
"Worked once, but they'll cook the grenade next time and it'll take your leg off. Let them take come in the hard way."
No sooner had I said it than a repeating blaster opened up on the main cargo door. I expected it to last for several heartbeats at best.
"Looks like you'll get that fight you were after Kah."
"I am never after a fight, Dallet-cha."
"Could you two hush? I'm trying to figure out how many there are." Fiti didn't seem best pleased by our banter.
"Probably three more than it takes to kill us, sister."
The door didn't hold. I could hear it warping and cracking, and eventually I could hear big pieces of it falling away. Pemwik climbed (broken wrist and all) up on the crates. There was a small window above the door, she crawled out into it prone, and sighted.
"Watch the door, here they come!" She opened fire. We got busy down below.
Whoever was in charge knew that the barricade would probably block a blast, but wouldn't do much to stop sound. He ordered a couple of stun grenades tossed into the foyer, and before they rushed in, I was soundly (pardon the pun) deaf.
The crates slid slowly back, there must have been several men pushing. I retreated to the far side of the lip around the supply-pit, Kah waited at the door. Pemwik was now lodged in the narrow high window, her ladder having been pushed into the room. She cursed as the wriggled around.
Two helmets poked in, one around either side of the crate. I fired at the one on 'my' side, but he'd already ducked back behind the crate. Kah was tussling with his already. I ran around the ring, not liking Kah's odds. As 'my' trooper turned to help his friend, I shot him in the back of the head. Score two for my new best friends the Rebellion. Kah sent his nerveless new friend back into the space between the door and the crate, to let future intruders deal with him. He said something to me, or at least his mouth moved, but I couldn't make out the words. I could feel several more troopers outside, their anger growing. Apparently they weren't concerned with their wounded in the doorway, because the repeating blaster opened up again, pinning us away from the door, and melting the cargo containers. The aim shifted, I could feel the fire 'walking' up the exterior wall towards the window. Right about then, Fiti fell heavily to the floor, and scooted on her rear out of the doorway. She didn't look so hot, she might have caught some shrapnel or maybe even blasterfire from her position up above. She held up two fingers and smiled proudly. I pointed to the corpses in the doorway, held up four fingers, and made as if brushing off my chest. I doubted we'd live long enough for her to count them and know I was lying.

Two more flashbangs came in, but no more troopers. I could feel them moving about outside, and their anxiety had dropped off markedly. Perhaps they knew something I didn't, if they didn't fear going into the building anymore. The were close though, and doing something that required their full attention...
"We have to get out, " I shouted. Some of my hearing was coming back, I'd managed to plug my ears before stun-grenade number three. "They're rigging us up with explosives!" The Sergeant just nodded, as if this was a predictable plan, and the prospect of being atomized didn't bother her. Maybe she'd hit the huffer while I wasn't looking.
"I will go first." Kah was leaning just inside the doorway, trying to gauge the location of the repeating blaster. I probably should have sounded heroic and volunteered, but I figured Kah had the best chance, and I was... well, more attached to staying alive than he was.
"No Kah, I'm rank here, I lead. No questions," Sergeant Pemwik said. Leave it to the woman to be bossy.
"Whatever, " I said, "let's move before that repeater opens up again."
"I'll be breaking left when I get out there. As soon as I clear the door, give me some grazing fire."
"Sure thing. What's grazing fire?"
"Just shoot. A lot." She bolted.

Outside, Shedfall's counter-attack was sowing confusion amongst the troopers. Our little welcoming party had spelled off some of its own force to go meet the incoming counterstrike. When Pemwik charged out the front door, nobody shot at her. By the time I laid down covering fire, they'd started to pay attention again. I didn't hit anyone, but I must have ticked them off. Pemwik (or someone) started shooting them from alongside the building, and for just an instant the fire on the doorway let up, and Kah squirted out like he'd known it was coming. He flashed right, out of sight, and put down some fire himself. I got to the street, and realized I had no idea which way to go. Standing still seemed really dumb, so I rushed right like Kah had, and met him alongside the building. We fell back to the rear of the building under more fire, but the troopers seemed not to be too worried about us.
"Ok, wow, " Fiti seemed surprised that she was alive. "Now we'll double back to the far side of the Commander's force, and link up with them."
"Sure, where the hell is that?" I asked, I wanted to know. You know, like 'where in relation to the guys that really want to kill us is that', but I figured my little shorthand would suffice.
"Beak-side."
"Huh?"
She pointed to the carbonite buzzard. I surmised that the buzzard was the only one not worried by blaster fire. I still didn't get her drift.
"Great, a frozen bird. What?"
"The beak side of town."
"Oh. They actually call it that?" She ignored me.
"Ten second gaps, don't stop in the open. Building to building. Got it?" She didn't wait for a response. "Follow me."
"You next Kah."
"Of course, Dallet-cha."

As we rounded the last row of buildings, I started to get this funny feeling. We'd huddled up at a corner, Fiti trying to figure out where her friends were. I was trying to catch my breath. Sometimes when I was fighting in the desert, I'd gotten this feeling that I was in the right place, doing exactly the right thing. Now I felt its dark twin; I was in the wrong place, and things were going horribly wrong. We'd gotten away too cleanly, something was seriously amiss. I wished I knew what.
"Master Kah, something's not right."
"Much is not right, Dallet."
"I know, but... bah. I don't know."
"Trust your feelings in this, Dallet-cha. It may be the Force."
"Yeah, well, it could get me shot."
"Certainly."
"I see them," Pemwik said. "Let's move." I felt a spike of exultation behind us, and I knew where I was supposed to be. We were screwed.
"Get her to the bunker Kah. I'll follow if I can."
"May the Force be with you, my student."
I spun, checking the load on my rifle. Plenty of juice left. I started to get that tingling sense of impending violence. Fiti and Kah started to move at the same instant three stormtoopers cleared a building only a few paces behind us. One of them had a rank-plate on his shoulder, a Sergeant. I stepped into the roadway, standing tall and presenting an excellent target. Believe me, it's a stupid idea. As expected, they shot. They were good shots, too.
I tried to move, tried to be somewhere the bolts weren't going to be, and sight down the barrel of my rifle at the same time. It was just too much. I settled for pinning the blaster to my hip like in the holovids and firing blindly as I moved towards them. Something still sane in my head told me that it was a very bad idea to close on them, that getting closer made me a bigger target. Something stronger told me: You should be here. Damn me, but I went with the insane opinion.
Everything slowed down. I could feel Fiti turn towards the blaster fire, starting to head back to me. I couldn't see it, but I got the impression that Kah picked her up bodily and kept her going towards the 'beak-side' of things. I hoped she made it, she had potential. My adversaries, predictably, decided to kill me before moving on to fleeing targets. They must have been confounded at my strange advance, stepping now to one side, now to another, evacuating the space that only an instant later would house a blaster bolt. I kept firing as I moved, but I wasn't even close.
I threw the rifle at the sergeant. Fiti and Kah were getting beyond my range.
The sergeant didn't even bother to duck, the rifle bounced off of his gleaming white armor. He began to step backwards, sinking to a knee. I ignored him. His two allies kept up their fire upon me, refusing to believe they'd missed. They fired in tandem, they were good. I turned profile to them, I felt one bolt burn across my chest, another the backs of my thighs, they were that close. But then I was upon them, and I moved as quickly as thought.
I slid between them, and behind. As they turned, my right hand caught the left gunner's chin, and I helped him turn to face me. I helped him so much that his body couldn't keep up. I pressed the top of his head forward and away while I pulled his chin up and to me. His armor was very good, and allowed a free range of motion. Perhaps too good, it didn't stop his head until I had turned it far enough to snap his neck. I tried to steer his falling body towards the other shooter, but it was falling too slowly, and the shooter had only to pull the trigger.
The top of the dead man's helmet slid past the muzzle of the living stormtrooper's blaster-carbine. I couldn't have timed it better if I'd tried. Most of the bolt harmlessly ablated the dead man's helmet, some of it bounced past to sear my right hip. Meaningless, because I was dead anyway if he fired again. Forgetting finesse, I shot my left knee ahead into his faceplate, which was made to resist just such impact. Not good for my leg, but it must have rattled him some, because he bowled over backwards. I followed the motion through, raising my left leg high, bringing the heel down crushingly fast, into his throat. Because it needed to be a bit more flexible, it gave way beneath the strain, and the man's gloved hands raced to his throat, vainly trying to save himself.
I couldn't feel Kah or Fiti. Either they were dead, or they'd gotten away clean.
The smuggler in me thought it'd be good to finish him before I dealt with the last man. The Force told me to turn. But I was still moving so fast, nothing could stop me. Or so I thought. I sank my right knee down on to the flailing man's throat, ending his struggles by dropping my weight into his neck. I sprang up, still moving like a blur, and spun to face the last soldier.
He was calm, collected, and ready. I looked at those flat black eyeplates and I knew I was dead. I should have dealt with him first. The feeling of rightness was gone, and in its place was the feeling of certainty that came with knowing I was going to eat a blaster bolt. I didn't have to wait long.
The first beam lanced through my right thigh, instantly crumpling the leg beneath me. As I sank to my left side, the next bolt seared my left shoulder or arm, I couldn't tell which. It hurt like hell compared to the thigh. I landed on my left knee, afraid to topple either way. The trooper rose slowly, the single black pupil of his blaster pointed at my face. His head turned ever so slightly to evaluate his friends.
"You're going to wish you died as fast as they did." His voice was the tinny washed out voice speaker, all emotion and humanity cleaned carefully out in pre-processing. I barely even saw the butt of his rifle as he delivered a very professional stroke to my forehead.
For the second time in a few hours, I went to sleep.

"Why? He didn't even know me? We might have taken three of them Kah! We might have taken them."
"No, Sergeant, we couldn't have. He knew it." Kah said, once they'd stopped running.
"They couldn't have gotten all three of us, on the run. We might have made it."
Kah looked at her sharply, teeth gleaming.
"They didn't get all of us, Sergeant. We did make it. His choice was the right one." My student, he thought sadly, that was the first test you passed cleanly. I hope you live long enough to realize it.

10-20-2004 07:45 PM

<3

Dallet 2.5

Buzzard, Beakside

"Sergeant, I believe I asked for your report." The too-pale Commander Shedfall spoke faintly, and at odd intervals. His breathing was being done for him, off and on. He was partially encased in a large cylindrical chestpiece, a surgical droid had left it attempting to repair his lung enough that he'd survive bacta-immersion. If they could retake the town and get him into the bacta-tank. He was propped up against a crate in a prefab barracks building. It ws the kind of building that could be assembled or disassembled in five minutes, and had enough structural stability to withstand nothing stronger than what might be considered a substantial breeze.
"Sir, shouldn't the surgical droid be-" Pemwik couldn't help but stare, she'd never seen anyone that pale, if you didn't count corpses.
"The droid is seeing to my wounded, blast-it. Now you will deliver your report, or I will break you down to private if I have to do it posthumously!"
"Sir. Yes Sir, " she was almost as unsettled by her commanding officer as she had been by the firefight. "I was dispensing supplies to the two we brought in earlier, when one of them, the human, saw the Stormtroopers. I communicated strength and coordinates to Captain Stark, who connected me to you." She paused, as if waiting for confirmation from the Commander that he'd heard. He continued to glare at her. "We barricaded the door and resisted several attempts at entry."
"We, Sergeant? The strangers took up arms then?"
"Sir, they are to be commeneded. Their assistance was invaluable. Without them I would surely be dead."
"Strong praise for civilians, Miss Pemwik," the Commander gurgled, trying vainly to continue talking while the mechanical-thorax tried to draw breath for him.
"You will see what I mean in my report sir." He made a motion to continue.
"We defended the depot as long as possible sir. I personally noted three casualties from the hostiles, and I suspect there were more. We were attacked in force, with explosives and infantry support weapons." She paused to see if he had any questions. He did not. "Dallet, the human, suspected that the stormtroopers had set explosives, or at least were setting them outside. We left the building. We took fire outside, but it was light and not engaging. There were explosives outside the depot, I noted them and their positions."
"That's good Sergeant, we shall need them," he interrupted.
"Sir?"
"We'll have to blow the Depot. The supplies could be used to trace our path through the desert."
"Most of the gear was unmarked or standard issue, sir. I don't understand."
"C'mon Pemwik, use your brain! How hard would it be for some Imperial to try to match labels from our stock to labels in a street-vendor's cart? Or even the very person that gave them to us?"
"I see sir, I'll get to the demolition right away."
"Finish your report first, Sergeant."
"Yes sir. We evacuated the Depot, and headed beakside behind the depot and parallel to Main street. We encountered no meaningful resistance. Your counterassault was hitting at the same time, the Imperials were moving in the same direction as us. A party of three troopers, one noncom caught us in the rear. Dallet doubled back to delay them. We returned to the rally point."
"You left him behind Sergeant? A civilian?" If he could have expressed his anger by becoming paler, he would have. He couldn't though, because no paler shade existed.
"Sir, " her voice was tight with anger. "I attempted to assist Greenstar, but his instructor Kah advised me that it was wiser to withdraw."
"'Advised' Sergeant?"
"He carried me sir, kicking and screaming." She was more than slightly embarrased, but her captor, in her defense, had been a singularly powerful opponent, and an expert in hand-to-hand combat. The Commander knew this. He chuckled, which set off several alarms on the mechano-thorax. The 21-B surgical droid entered the room quietly to adjust the machine.
"Greenstar was killed then?"
"No sir, I don't believe so. The Stormtrooper noncom shot him, and then dragged him to cover. I have reason to believe that he was detained for questioning. The wounds looked serious but nonlethal."
"Is that all, Sergeant?"
"Sir, yes sir."
"Very good Sergeant, you are to be commended. Your actions provided us enough time to plan and implement a counterattack that has already saved many lives."
"Thank you sir. May I assemble a team to go recover mister Greenstar sir?"
"You will assemble your team and see to the disposition of this camp's security first, Sergeant. Secure our camp, blow the base, then maybe you can go after that incorrigible. That is all." A coughing fit shook him, and some alarming lights began blinking on the bacta-sleeve that was breathing for him.
"Yes sir."
"You are dismissed Pemwik. Send Captain Stark to me, and have him bring the official recorder." The 'official recorder' was a throwback, like a 'captain's log' on a spacegoing vessel. It usually took the form of a protocol droid, but in some cases was a less sophisticated device. It maintained the records of a unit in the field. Promotions, demotions, infractions, awards, casualties. In most cases it was consulted to confirm and record after-action reports. Only in grave circumstances would it be exposed to the hardship of an engaged camp or garrison. It could have been that Shedfall was merely being utterly certain that his commendations and reccommendations were being preserved for posterity, but the request made something twinge in Pemwik's subconscious. For a long second she stared at her commanding officer, face blank as if she didn't understand. He didn't bother to reprimand her.
"Sir," she began. "It has been an honor to serve with you sir." She stepped to, and through, the invisible barrier between them, the one defined by rank and tradition. She grabbed Shedfall's hand with both of hers. It was cold and lifeless. He smiled at her.
"You would have made me one fine Lieutenant, Pemwik. I have " - another cough - "every intention of suggesting your promotion to Captain Stark."
"Thank you sir. You will be missed."
"Very good, Sergeant. Now would you please do as you are commanded and get Captain Stark before I expire?" Absurd, that he could be humorous while facing death, but real nonetheless.
Pemwik saluted, turned smartly, and rushed out to retrieve Stark and the recorder.

"Sifer!"
"Sarge?" A tanned Zabrak turned from a field communications console to face Pemwik. "I'm busy tring to - er, Lieutenant? When the hell did that happen?"
"It hasn't yet. Try to radio central. Send them this." She handed him a datadisc. "Crypto only. Pass the word, the old man just died. Stark is in charge. I'm his second."
"Dammit." He paused, blinking. "Dammit." He closed his eyes for a moment, as close to despair as a professional soldier would let himself get, considering their grim situation. "He was a hell of a lot better than most of them. Dammit." Cursing seemed to help him.
"I know Sifer, he was the best I've served under. Now we've got to do him proud. When you're done, tell Talbot and Zerram that I want to see them."
"My equipment won't reach them Sarge. Cripes. Lieutenant."
"Huh?"
"Talbot was on perimeter duty, and was the first one to get killed. Zerram was with the old man when the E-Web hit his vehicle. Zerram dragged him clear of the wreckage before he went down."
"Not both of them, " now it was Pemwik's turn to border on desolation. "I've been with them since the Hollinger Star battles." She shook her head slowly. "Who's left?" She spoke quietly, as if it were a rhetorical question.
"Squaros and Rotter, they're both ok. Flange, Trix and Pesh made it, but I heard Pesh lost an eye in the skirmish tail-side."
"I didn't even hear about a skirmish tail-side. He's tough though, and we can probably graft him."
"Yeah, he told me he wants one blue and one green now. Crazy vastak." Sifer turned the disc over in his hands, staring at it.
"Get on that transmit, private. Find me when you get done, and tell Rotter and Flange they're about to be made noncoms."

"Sir, why are we bothering to fix him up, if you're just going to kill him," VK901 asked Debs.
"He killed oh-three and oh-seven. He deserves something more exotic than shock." Debs applied another bandage, hoping the bacta in it would help stop the blood loss from the thigh. Of the two serious wounds, the thigh was easily the most lethal. The femoral artery hadn't been completely burned shut, and was still leaking blood freely. The left arm and shoulder looked pretty badly burned as well, as if the man had been momentarily dipped in boiling oil. Unusual, Debs thought, since I hit him square. That should be through-and-through. I should be able to see daylight through the arm, instead it's only second or third-degree burns.
"He does, at that sir. Three pulled me from the wreckage of that lander on Yavin sir." He shot a hard look at the patient on the countertop. "When it's his time sir, I would really appreciate it if you let me watch. Maybe even help?"
"If it can be arranged, oh-one, you'll pull the trigger. You're my corporal now, I'll make sure Tarq approves it when we get back."
"Right sir. Here's my spare pack." He set it on the counter beside the dying man. "I'll go relay our position."
The counter was in what only hours before had been a modest little kitchen in the town of Buzzard. Now it was a makeshift operating table in the embattled town of Buzzard, or 'zone G2' on the Imperial survey. Its original owners were laying in the street outside, quite dead. VK441, or Debs to his men, had been ordered to pacify the locals in a memorable way. What could be burned was burning, and several families would be burying loved ones come dawn.
Debs stabilized his patient, to the best of his training. He guessed that the man might live to be interrogated back at headquarters. It was a gamble, taking the man back, but it was less risky than remaining here in the field. If he survived the trip, and Debs was going to make damned sure he did, he'd become an official prisoner and therefore subject to some scrutiny and protection. Commander Tarq would not be pleased when VK441 described his intent with the man, but Tarq was reasonable and not unsympathetic towards the plight of the enlisted man. In short, Debs thought that he could convince Tarq to let him have 'an accident' with the prisoner once interrogation was complete. Debs was not particularly happy about the prospect of murder in cold blood, but he was determined to make the man pay for the deaths of two soldiers; two soldiers that Debs considered tremendously more valuable than one man.
"Belay that, Corporal. Let's move him now."

"Rotter, how's our perimeter?"
"It's in place, Sarge-Lieutenant." He stumbled over her new rank. "I've got Trix and the two new kids from Anchorhead doing patrols. Sifer got a couple droids working, and he stood two up that's still busted, but look like they're working."
"Just call me Pemwik for a while, until you get the hang of Lieutenant, " she almost smiled as she said it. "How are the newbies holding up?"
"We lost one right after we blew the HQ, ma'am. We withdrew and he was slowest man, they picked him off easy."
"Damn. Which one was he?"
"Don't remember, I think he was either Sandrivers or Ridge. Sandrivers, I think." He didn't seem particularly ashamed at his lack of recall. The new recruits had only been with their squad for a week, and there had been many such waves of reinforcement.
"How's Pesh?"
"Not bad, considering." Rotter smiled, a big toothy grin for a human. Amusing, considering the number of gaps in his smile. "Silly Twilek. Did you hear he wants them to get him a new eye, bright red! Claims he was born with red eyes."
"Oh bantha-dung! His other eye's blue."
"He says that one's a replacement too!" Rotter laughed out loud. "I told him they should have him carry a spare around, he goes through so damned many of them!"
A tall Zabrak appeared, stepping quietly from the space between two buildings. The shadows were growing, with the coming night. He used them for cover.
"Sifer, good, " Pemwik said, "I wanted to see you. We're moving out in the morning, a rescue or recovery mission."
"Which is it ma'am, rescue or recovery?"
"Rescue I hope. I was thinking, we need a way to track the Stormies when they leave."
"They're leaving?"
"Captain Stark seems to think so. We left enough dead behind us that they probably figure we fled. Well, we did flee, kinda. The way I see it though, since they're in no great hurry to vacate..."

"This, " Debs said to me from somewhere out-of-sight, "is an interrogation droid. They're very good at what they do." I didn't respond, my voice wasn't working yet. Nothing was working right. I couldn't move my hands or feet, couldn't turn my head, or talk. I could blink, but that was about it. It hurt to focus my eyes on anything for long, so I didn't. I faded in and out, but if I closed my eyes, someone hit me. Usually Debs. Sometimes I could stare at the sterile white ceiling and really be asleep. They didn't catch me right away if I didn't close my eyes. But it hurt to do it that way.
"Do you remember me, Rebel? I'm Debs. I'm the last man you're ever going to see."
Improvement, I licked my lips that time when I tried.
"This droid here has given you some things to make you more helpful. I had him sew you up enough so that you won't bleed out."
I blinked. Talking was still well beyond me.
"I shot you up pretty good. The boys and I couldn't save the leg, and you were lighter drag without it." He leaned overhead into my fixed field of vision to say the last. "The boys wanted to kill you out there for what you did, but I told them to wait, that it wouldn't be civilized." A smile. "I told them that, but they needed something, so I let them leave the leg behind."
I had to blink a lot, my eyes were watering pretty bad. Must have been that light.
"Your arm is pretty messed up too, Rebel. It's not as heavy though, so it's still attached." He paused, disappeared from view for several breaths. "What's this? That was fast, well done. I guess I should be calling you Private Zillik, eh?"
They must have searched my old records.
"Maybe if we let you keep that arm, you'll be more cooperative, eh Zillik?"
I blinked.
"I'm Debs, " he said again, laughing. "This is an interrogation droid. You're Zillik. Remember? Now we're going to play a game, and the droid's going to turn your voice back on. You're going to answer questions. If you don't answer, it's going to hurt."
Screw you Debs, I thought grimly. My name is Dallet Greenstar. I wish I could say I was as defiant five minutes later.

In the darkness, Fiti and Sifer crouched in the clearing behind the depot.
"It was all still rigged ma'am, I just replaced the receivers."
"Good. We'll touch it off in a second. What about that tracking device?"
"Well Lieutenant, I was thinking about that. See, they know we booby-trap corpses a lot, so they'll probably pre-autopsy them with a droid before they take them into their base."
"Yes, so no implants. What have you come up with?"
"This." He dug into a utility pouch, and pulled out a mushy blob of something.
"Twelve Hells, Sifer! That smells like Bathascat!"
"It is banthascat, ma'am."
"That's great, so why do you have a pocket full of it?"
"It's real sticky."
"Yeah, who's on cooking detail tonight? If it's you, you'd better wash up real good."
"No, see? The droid will do the corpse, but it'll probably be another stormy that does the body." He dug into his pocket, pulled out a microtransmitter. "This goes in here, " a finger pushed the trasmitter into the dung, "and this goes on a boot. A dead boot. Maybe a pile or two in the street, maybe we get a live soldier too."
"Why not use glue Sifer?"
"You ever step in bantha-shi-"
"Yes, I have, I don't see the point."
"Did you look at it real close when you scraped it off?"
"No."
"Neither will they, probably. Ain't nobody going to take the time to scrape the poop off a dead guy's boots either."
"Not bad, Sifer. Not bad at all. Get out there and... er, 'place' the transmitter?"
"Yes ma'am."

"Yes, yes Sergeant. I approved everything. I was pleased by your team's performance in the G2 event, " Tarq said. He stared down at the naked, unconscious human on the table. A black spherical droid hovered attentively over the body. He turned to address the little ball.
"You will wait outside. You will mute all audio input. Comply." The droid zipped out of the room, hovering at rest in the hallway.
"Debs, you shouldn't have told him we took his leg. I thought the premise was that he was to be executed while escaping?"
"Sir, it was. I don't see the problem." Debs was pleased at the earlier compliment, but confused by the question.
"Debs, has it ever occured to you that the investigators might question why lethal force was going to be needed during the escape attempt of a one-legged prisoner? Or maybe why he in fact has both legs?"
"The tapes sir, I thought-"
"The tapes will be turned over to Intelligence for review, Sergeant, as always. They will pore over every moment of them. You must learn to be more discreet. They will realize things have been edited."
"Damn it. Yes sir. Sorry sir."
"Begin the interrogation again, get the same information out of him. If he asks why or complains, dose him. There must be no leak to intelligence about this."
"Yes sir, " Debs said.
"Nine-oh-three was with me at Yavin. Some damned fool practically incinerated our shuttle. I was unconscious, three cut me loose and called the medic. I don't like torture, Debs, but you just make sure that when he 'escapes' that he suffers."
"Yes sir, I will be certain, " Debs spoke with something akin to reverence.

"My name is Debs, " he said again to me, "and this is an interrogation droid. Droid, a dose for mister Zillik, to remind him we mean business."
It hurt, it hurt like nothing I've ever known before. Some time back, a lifetime ago, I'd had a couple bones broken. At the time, I thought that the feel of broken bone ends grating against one another was the most horrific thing I'd ever felt. It was a lover's touch next to the droid.
"There we go. Now we will discuss the troop strength of the unit that we flushed out of... " he paused to check his datapad, "Buzzard."
I told him everything I could remember. I even made things up. Sometimes he caught me, and it hurt. Sometimes he didn't catch me, but he still dosed me. If I ever hated one word, it was 'dose'.
"Droid, dose." "A dose for Zillik." "Dose, again." "Double dose, for a liar." "Dose, for good measure." I would have killed him, if I could. I would have killed his whole family, his pets, and the people that lived next door. Finally the questions stopped, and time passed. Dim light seeped through some high windows, and I found that I could move my eyes around in their sockets. Still couldn't feel my limbs, but I could talk and blink and look, so it was an improvement.
They're going to kill me today, I thought to myself. I could feel the confirmation in Debs when he walked in the door.
"Dose for Zillik, for a morning treat!" Debs seemed outwardly cheery, but he was darkened to my sight by his murderous intent.
"And now, mister Zillik, you're going to tell me some things that would really hurt you. Some things I know you don't want to tell me."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because they might hurt less than the droid. Dose." I got hit with it, again.
"Now that we're feeling congenial, Zillik, tell me what would really scare you. What would really hurt?"
"A sandwich. I'm terrified by them. Especially on fresh bread." I knew it was going to cost me, maybe my life. It was funny though, and I was dead anyway.
"Zillik, I like a man with spine. Dose. I like a man with fortitude. I ofen wonder, dose, why a human with any brains, dose, would choose to join this upstart rebellion? Dose." He kept talking, but it was all lost to me. The pain actually did increase with every dose, I thought I'd hit the high end of the scale. I couldn't black out either, because that (damn his creator forever) droid kept me awake.
"Petra! Petra hurts." I couldn't unclench my teeth to say it, so it was mumbled. I think I broke one of the back teeth I was gritting them so hard. Barely felt it, next to the droid.
"Oh, finally. Well, I'm afraid we won't have the time for anything like looking up old friends. Dose. But I guess I can come up with something. Droid, go get the Corporal, I promised him he could be here for this. Send him in, then go to the maintenance bay. You're leaking fluid everywhere."

Kah found them moving quietly down the street just before dawn. He was wearing scavenged body armor, and carrying a standard-issue EE3 Carbine.
"Master Kah, no civilians. No way, " Pemwik said in a loud whisper. "Get the hell out of here. We'll bring him back."
"I will go with you." He brooked no argument, just checked the load on his gun.
"No way, no way at all, " Pemwik continued. "If we get there and it gets crazy, I can't be watching out for you. We'll take good care of him, I promise!"
"It is not him I am worried about, Sergeant. He is alive or he is dead."
"Well, we all appreciate your concern then Kah, but we can handle this. And its Lieutenant now."
"Lieutenant, you do not understand. If he is alive, then he might be more dangerous than all the Stormtroopers in this desert."
"I dont' think so, he was all shot up!" Pemwik's frustration came out, she was getting loud. "I think we can manage one mangled human!"
Kah motioned her aside. Against her better judgement, she indulged him. "Rotter, " she said to one of the humans trying to appear indifferent to the argument, "take them up to the edge of town, I'll catch up." She walked a few steps away, and soon only she and Kah remained behind.
"What's this all about Kah?"
"Dallet-cha is in training to be a Jedi. You are familiar with the term?"
"Who isn't? I thought you two looked crazy to begin with. Now I know it. You stay behind or I'll shoot you myself."
"Dallet-cha, " he continued unabated, "saved your life."
"I didn't ask him to do that!"
"Dallet might be a Jedi some day. I am a poor excuse for a teacher. I have known some, and I am all that is left." A milky membrane slid over his eyes, partially obscuring them from Pemwik. "I have seen them hunted to extinction. I have seen them harried and pursued, even when they held to the code, to the ancient truths. I have seen great evil done to their order, Sergeant, " he said, forgetting her new rank. "There was a time even that I helped hunt them, helped kill them off, even the ones that kept the code."
Pemwik stared at him in confusion. It was all history, not exactly ancient, but all years behind them.
"I owe their order a debt, and I intend to see it paid. If you allow me, I will accompany you. If you do not, " the membrane slid away, and his reptilian eyes fixed upon her with a flat, dead gaze, " I will follow you. If you encounter what he might have become, I will be the only one who survives. He will kill you all. He will have no choice. And then I will kill him."
"What are you talking about? He's wounded, he's probably dead by now. If he isn't, he's still no match for my squad."
"If he lives, he may be turned to the Dark Side already. There are Forces at work in the Empire, they corrupt all that they touch. I have fear for him. And for your men."
"You're crazy, " Pemwik said. "You're crazy and you're slowing me down."
"I will keep up, Lieutenant. I will not burden you."
"Just be quiet and follow my lead, lizard."
"Thank you, miss Pemwik."

The Corporal didn't introduce himself before he tortured me. It occurred to me that Debs might be considered a gentleman in that respect. It also occurred to me that I couldn't take much more, no matter how good the droid might have been. And the droid had been dismissed.
I could snuff out their life, if I was a Jedi, I thought to myself. I could reach out and pull the building down on them. I could choke them, or crush them, or make them insane. The holovids showed it all the time. But I could do none of it, because I wasn't a Jedi, I was a fool, a recovering addict, an idiot in the desert. And I was going to die, either here or outside, because I'd killed two men this Corporal guy had been friends with.
It doesn't have to be like this, I thought. If only... I could feel the Corporal in the Force. I could feel the rage building in him, each battering stroke he took at me made him stronger. Each kick, each swing, made him more resolute. I felt the fire in me, broken ribs, broken cheekbones, broken teeth. I felt the fire of the Corporal's rage, and I let it warm me. It didn't warm so much as burn, but it felt better than the pain itself. It made me strong.
My swollen eyes opened, and I looked into the Corporal's maddened face, tight and livid with rage. I stopped him.
He clutched at his throat, clawed at his own face. He grew shocked and frightened. I felt it, I fed off of it. I could feel the cold fire returning to my gut, like rancid iced wine, churning and burning. He would have screamed it he could breathe, I could feel him wanting too. I chuckled, feeling warmth and power returning to my limbs. All of my limbs. Debs you lying weasel, I thought exultantly. You're next.
The Corporal was flailing, rage vanished into fear, fear fading into terror and blind panic. He moved as if to flee. I held him easily. So this is how they do it, I mused silently. This is how they manipulate things. The Corporal didn't seem to be enjoying my little rite of discovery. He flailed, his struggles weakening. One of his hands touched the panel that controlled the room's environment, and extinguished the surgical lights that had been shining down on me.
For just a moment, the room was dark as my eyes adjusted to the ambient lighting.
I could see it all over again, the dim cockpit, lit suddenly by the glow of a lightsaber. Rage tainted her face, rage and pain.
Oh Petra, I thought. Now I understand. Such power, such incredible power. I felt the life draining out of the man. I simultaneously felt a portion of glee that he was almost dead. Once ages ago I'd thought of Petra as the most dangerous drug, but I'd been wrong. Petra wasn't anything compared to the raw seduction of power, and this was the purest power I'd ever felt. So strong, such need. Such reward.
Such slavery.
I had thrown off the yoke of one master, one poison, for another. I'd freed myself from one drug so that I might become addicted to another.
"What are you?" Kah had asked. I had answered: "A failure." He had called my admission a beginning.
"Such power, " I said aloud. Petra had been here, and she had chosen the power. Now I knew. From this place spread two paths, one long and dark, the other short and bright. I could chose to serve again, to willingly submit to the drug that such ultimate power would become. Or, I could choose to deny it, but seal my own fate. The Zillik in me had already made his choice, and was waiting for the Corporal to stop twitching. The Dallet was not so certain. So many paths ended, so much undone, so much work left to do. I could, I thought, just escape, try to use as little power as possible, maybe repent outside...
The lure was too strong. I knew I would never be free of it, never be more than one minute step away from the next rationalization, the next justification for just one more taste of the drug.
I released the Corporal, felt life rushing back into his unconscious body. I felt it rushing out of mine. Unsupported by the rage, my wounds returned to me to collect their debt in pain. I managed to climb back onto the gurney, and rested.
I tried to compose myself. The man was coming around, he'd be awake and finish his job soon enough. Such a waste, I thought sadly. All the training, all the suffering. All for naught. Well, I thought placidly, laying my head back, at least now I know.
The man stirred, getting to his feet groggily.
"I'm very sorry, " I said to him, and closed my eyes. It was all I could think to say, and it was too true.
How did it begin again? Ah, yes, I thought, taking solace in the routine. Kah's voice came back to me.
"Breathe," he said patiently in my memory. I will miss those stupid lessons, I thought.
"Breathe," the voice of memory said again. "Smell the sand and the wind..." Not this time, I replied.

"Sergeant! Sarge!" Debs grabbed the running man by the shoulders, bearing him forcefully into the wall outside of the medical bay.
"Emporer's Ass, Corporal! What the hell happened to you?" The man was a mess; eyes the color of blood, nose bleeding and face an apoplexic purple.
"He woke up sir, he woke up and he did something to me!"
"Did he escape? How did he survive that dosage, he shouldn't have been able to walk!"
"No sir, no, he never touched me- I swear!"
"Dammit nine-oh-one, get a bloody grip! Where is he?"
"He's still inside sir, he's on the table."
"Alright, alright, did you finish it?"
"Sir, no, I didn't! I swear I didn't." 901 was almost to the point of tears, Debs suspected he might need immediate medical attention.
"Well let's get in there and finish it then. I'll do it if you can't."
"That's just it sir! I didn't touch him, but but but-"
"Damn you Corporal, but what?"
"He's dead sir! He just laid down on the table and died! He said 'I'm very sorry' and died!"
By now Debs had dragged the stuttering man back into the med bay, and stared down at the table. For a long moment they both just looked at the corpse, one in confusion, and the other in shock.
"I don't care how anyway, Corporal. He's dead, and that's what we wanted. Your wounds were from his escape attempt, you understand? You were defending yourself." Debs was shaking him now, making him pay attention.
"Yes sir, I understand sir. We fought, I killed him." Debs dragged the corpse unceremoniously to the floor, arranged it near the doorway.
"You fought, you killed him. In a few minutes you will sound the general alarm."
"Yes sir, " the harried man said. "I'm sorry I'm so screwed up sir, I'm-"
"Later, Corporal. Let me get back out front, I'll be the first in. Five minutes now, no less."

"Can you crack it, Sifer?" Pemwik had rushed from cover to crouch behind him at the small blast door. The sentries were dead or incapacitated, and wouldn't be sounding any alarms. Failure to report would soon sound the alarms for them though.
"I think I got it ma'am, " he said tightly. "Yes, it's done. I'll clear the hall!" He squirted in without waiting for orders. Pemwik motioned the team up behind her.
"We're in. Try not to hit friendlies or the human we're after. Cameras on, and a bonus to anyone that brings grade-a intel to me."
They squeezed past the partially opened blast doors, and into the compound.

Sifer slid quietly down the main hallway, expecting alarms any moment. The building was pitifully small for an Imperial habitation, but it probably wasn't meant to be occupied by any number of troops. Still, he thought, there's fewer of them around than we thought. Maybe we'll make it out alive. He could hear his team coming up behind him, only a few seconds back. He slid away from the wall as he rounded a corner, and spun to cover the hallway with his blaster. A Stormtrooper in fatigues was huffing briskly down the hallway, looking like he was going somewhere in a hurry. He stopped dead when he saw Sifer pointing the blaster at him.
"You!" Recognition dawned on the man's face.
Sifer adjusted his blaster, and shot the man twice. The man was blown forcibly back down the hallway in the direction he'd come from.
"Sifer, situation?" Pemwik was edging up behind him. He took four long strides to the man, and knelt alongside him. His fingers felt the man's neck for a pulse. Sifer stood up, shot the man again.
"A Sergeant ma'am. He's dead." Sifer pulled the man into an adjoining room, guessing that it was empty if nobody had come out to investigate the shots. He dragged the man in out of the way, and headed back out. Pemwik nodded and the team swept further down the hall.

A Trandoshan held the man to the floor, kneeling between his shoulder blades, the lizard's bulk balanced lightly above him.
"I said 'where' is the human prisoner?"
One of the man's arms slid across the floor, pointed down the hallway. Kah tapped the man's forehead almost gently into the floor, and the man didn't move again.

901's hand hovered, shaking, over the general alarm. Eighty more seconds, he told himself. Eighty more seconds, count them out. Alarm claxons rang, and he stared at his hand in horror. It was still inches away from the button.
He cast a shocked glance around the room, back at the button, and then to the body on the floor behind him. He had not set off the alarm. He was sure. He didn't have to wait long to find the culprit. The door to the hallway slid open, and a tall, dark form stepped in. It was scaled, hands and feet uncovered. It moved into the room smoothly, and let the door slide shut behind it. It looked around the room, and 901 took a few involuntary steps back. His retreat opened a line of sight to the body on the floor.
The Corporal was looking around the room for weapons, when he _felt_ the Trandoshan's gaze snap back to him. He turned to meet it. Without breaking eye contact, Kah's hand slammed into the door's control, and acrid smoke twisted away from it. He lowered into a crouch, clawing at the armor haphazardly worn across his torso. A low hiss came from him, rising in intensity and volume. His claws shredded the armor, and he cast it to the floor around him. Scales rippled as the muscles beneath then spasmed and filled with blood. Ridges around his ears spread away from his head, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. The eyes finally looked away from 901, and back down to the form on the floor.
"Is he dead, " Kah asked quietly. His voice was a low rumble. "How long ago?"
901 was about to refuse to answer, about to scorn response, but he found he just didn't have the strength. Not after the choking madness, and the blackout...
"I killed him," he said, repeating as he'd been ordered to. The hissing increased. "He was trying to escape. I k-killed him in self defense."
"If Dallet-cha had been trying to escape, you would be dead." Kah stopped hissing to deliver his words at low volume. "How long?"
"Almost five minutes."
Outside the room, the claxon went abruptly dead. Dull thumps shook the building. The Trandoshan and the man stared at each other. Someone began tapping on the door, almost furtively.
"I was only defending myself. He was trying to escape." Great Maker, 901 thought. Where is the Sergeant?
"I am Kah. Master of the Path. I was this man's teacher. Now you may defend yourself against me."
"It was my life or his, I didn't know him!"
Kah kicked the armor-shreds clear of his feet, and cast down the carbine. His clawed foot kicked it across the room to the startled soldier. "Perhaps you would like an advantage?" The trooper looked at the gun. He was fast, and the Lizard was several steps away. Good odds, he thought.
As VK901 bent down to snatch up the gun, a roar tore out from the deep chest of the Trandoshan. The man paused, but only for an instant. He brought the gun up, hands shaking. When Kah moved, it was with total commitment. The EE3 began pumping out spheres of heat with a steady spitting sound, starting first low, then passing up from the floor towards the shouting Trandoshan. His clothing smoldered and caught fire, but he was implacable.
He swept the muzzle away scornful of the heat searing his blocking hand, making his scale smoke. His other hand caught the trooper under the chin, and lifted. Kah rushed forward, hunching up to full height, lifting the trooper's feet clear of the ground. His yell peaked, and the trooper hit the rear wall. Kah crushed the man into the wall, recoiled, and rammed him into the wall again. A pop issued from the locking mechanism in the wall by the door, but he was oblivious. Again, he smashed the corpse into the wall, leaving blood and gore seeping down behind it. He threw the body down, his shout turning into sobbing exhaustion.
"You are avenged, Dallet-cha." He collapsed to his knees beside the naked corpse, turned it over. "I wish you had been gifted with a better master." The door slid open slowly, Sifer was prying it clear with his hands.
"Trando, we've got to go. They're on to us."
"I have found him."
"He looks dead." Sifer didn't spare any sympathy, he hadn't met the man. "What about the other guy?"
"A murderer, I have dealt with him."
"Wow, I'll say."
"Leave now, I will bring my student."
"Right, Pemwik says you come now, or we leave you here. We're going out the same way we came in. Forty-five seconds till the smoke goes off too, so hurry."
Kah didn't respond. He gathered up Dallet's body, wrapped him in a sheet. He was reminded of other places, other times when he'd been at the side of a fallen Jedi. Always a waste, he thought, even when they had to be killed. This was doubly a waste, because Dallet-cha did not break. He had been put to the same test that poor Petra-cha had faced, but he had not turned. If only he had been able to find a real Master, a real Jedi... instead he had me, Kah thought darkly. I taught him to breathe, and fight, and hide. I taught him too much, and not enough.
Hide.
Kah's pulse quickened. Be careful, the thought, be sure. He clenched the human's throat, feeling for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
He counted, hearing the smoke grenades filling the hall outside the room, smelling the acrid tang.
There! A great heaving breath escaped the Trandoshan. A single pulse, solitary but strong. He hauled the body over his shoulder, and fled.

10-23-2004 05:47 PM

<3

Dallet 2.6

Near Buzzard (G2)

Tarq checked the seal on his 'cycling breather before stepping out into the hallway. He'd been awake when the attack hit, but off-duty interrogating a droid. It had reported to him in response to a small, unobtrusive bit of code he'd slipped in using his command releases.
-Subject of interrogation nears terminal exhaustion.-
"Fine, why aren't you there to monitor as I instructed?" The droid, not equipped with a voice synthesizer, displayed its responses on the man's desk terminal.
-Ordered to report for maintenance by VK441. Also responding to priority subcommand. Violation of Imperial Law to be reported-
"Delete that entry."
-Command release required.-
"Granted. Download recordings to my terminal. Good." Tarq began dressing. He was mostly in uniform when his Aide-de-Camp hit his priority chime.
"Droid, mute input and recording."
-Acknowledged.-
"Go ahead Fitch." Tarq pressed a button on his desk communications terminal.
"Sir, we've a security breach. East wing, and the central compound are infiltrated."
"How did they gain access, Lieutenant?"
"The complex side door sir, the network is reporting a malfunction on it." The Lieutenant had heard stories about a high incident of 'accidents' with the lower level commissioned officers in this unit. He had no desire to begin leading a field excursion, and was nervous.
"Alert security, and begin an immediate counterattack. Sweep east and bring the far side's sentries in to pin them at their entry point. They'll probably try to leave that way."
"Yes sir, shall I have security attend to you sir?"
"Negative, but have VK441 bring his squad to my quarters, we will push this wing clear."
"VK441 is not responsive sir."
"His designated NCO?"
"Also not available sir." Now the junior officer was sweating. He was happy that the comm terminal was voice-only.
"Fine. Give the unit a general assembly alert. Where was Debs last seen?"
"One moment sir... which one is Debs again sir?"
"Nevermind, it was probably the med bay. I'll go there myself. Tell security I'll meet them in the main corridor. They are to attempt some live captures for interrogation."
"Yes sir, very good sir."
He strapped on his tactical gear, and reached for the weapons rack above the bed. He remembered the droid.
"Droid, report to the east entrance and wait. Assist in any efforts to apprehend the resistance fighters. You are authorized to use force. You will erase the previous command sets I have given you. Private release granted."
-Acknowledged.- The droid hovered off to do its final duty. Tarq knew sending a medical unit out to guard the Rebels' only escape path was a foregone conclusion. Easier than trying to explain the memory gaps to his superiors, he thought sagely.

He held the gun with a smooth grip, neither clutching it nor dropping it. He was a bit out of practice, but the threat of imminent death took the rust off one's skills wonderfully. He slid through the smoke-obscured hallways like a ghost, from doorway to doorway, corner to crossway, always silent, always watching. Over the sound of his own even breaths through the cycling mask, he could faintly hear some motion in the hall ahead. He slid into a crouch, and then went prone. He lay along the wall, gun to the center of the hallway and pointing at the noise. One of the saving graces of fighting someone unfamiliar with indoor combat was that they tended to think like civilians; people walked down the center of hallways, and they did not lay on the floor. The surprise would give him the seconds he needed, unless his victim was similarly trained.
"Freeze! Name and rank."
"Debs sir, Sergeant." VK441's response was not his typical crisp, almost sardonic, attention to detail.
"Advance and be recognized."
Debs lurched forward, eyes fixed straight ahead. Tarq knew that he wasn't fooling VK441, but he wanted to make sure that Debs hadn't been made into some macabre booby-trap.
"Take ease, trooper." Debs collapsed. Tarq glanced back up the hall, then rose to a knee. He looked back at Debs.
What he had thought was a dark shirt wasn't anything of the sort; Debs had taken some bad burns to the chest, and closer examination showed black burns fading into red, then pink, then healthy flesh around on his back. What was left of his shirt was charred and singed.
"Report, 441."
"Infil-" a cough interrupted him, but he continued. "Infiltration sir. Small force. I was shot by one of them."
"You're lucky to be alive."
"Don't feel that way sir."
"Continue."
"Nine-oh-one's dead sir. The prisoner is gone too, but... he was in bad shape."
"Bad shape? I thought you two were going to address him... permanently sergeant." Debs looked around, as if becoming aware of his surroundings again. He noticed that there were no recording droids or observers.
"Oh-one killed him sir, he was a corpse before they got here."
"Good, carrying him might slow them down, the filthy vermin."
"Someone killed oh-one sir. Beat his brains out against the wall. Looked like his eyes were going to come right out of his head, and -"
"That's enough sergeant. You've seen worse. Hell, you've done worse." Debs just stared blankly ahead. He nodded slowly. Tarq had never seen him that shaken, but he'd also never actually seen him seriously injured. Debs was better than just good, he was a gifted professional. "Get a medic to look at that burn, it looks bad. Come find me when you're fit, four-four-one."
"Affirmative sir, " said Debs, then he rose and turned to shuffle back down the hall the way he'd come.

"No sir, we didn't take any prisoners. By the time the droid reported them, they were on the way out. The surviving perimeter sentries didn't get to the entrance in time to surround them."
"Did they even see them, Lieutenant?"
"Yes sir, certainly! There was a brief firefight. No casualties on either side except for the droid. I was about to contact you concerning a pursuing force, when you arrived."
"Belay the pursuit, we'll deal with them once we've got a decent complex that any Reb can't just walk up to and ask for a cup of kaf!"
"Yes sir."
"Get new perimeter guards out. Detail some men to clean the bodies up, and there's another in the infirmary. And inform Zeta division that we'll need more replacements. Tally the butcher's bill and ready a report." You idiot, Tarq's tone added silently.
"Sir." The Lieutenant practically fled, knowing he was getting off easily.

Buzzard, Tatooine

"You see lads, " the grizzled-looking Twilek said to a pair of painfully new recruits, "it's like this: I said to 'im, 'Captain Sir! If you'll be wantin' to recruit me, you'll be needing to drink me down. Won't no wrestling nor talk of wages be what wins me!' I told him lads, I told him I thought that a man best fit to command 'ad best be in command of his gullet, and drink shows ye when you're serving under a good man."
"I get it, " the raw recruit said. A human, eager and still sunburned from his first days in the desert. "But I bet he didn't fall for it! Not Shedfall!"
"Oh, he didn't, but Shedfall wasn't the Captain back then bucko! It was some fellow named Bixxix or somethingerother. Drank like a fish, he could. He did good, for a human. Almost matched me. He was on Alderaan when she went." The Twilek cast his glance down, his one functioning eye blinking furiously for a few moments. "I still got our regimental pennant, I do. But anyway, that's neither there nor bare. He shoulda signed me up sober, because I got me the best ticket a soldier ever did have!"
"What do you mean by that Mister Pesh?"
"T'ain't 'mister' Pesh, stripling! It's Pesh. That's Peshara'tintingu-Grannacha." He paused for grandiose effect, lost upon his audience. "Pesh also works."
"Alright Pesh, but how'd him being drunk make a difference?"
"I told the man, I'm an artist, says I, and I'm needing my hands, and my eyes, and even me beautiful old Lekku. I won't be having some whitefaced imp ballach shooting them off, I've got a family to see after." The two humans just stared, uncomprehending. "I didn't have a family, not traditional-like, you see. I was sure there might be a few wee Peshees runnin' about, but I just wasn't sure how many there might be. I was planning ahead. You've got to be planning ahead, boyos." The nodded robotically.
"Well, " the Twilek's good eye glittered mischeviously, "I got me a mustering slip that says: One Peshara'tintingu-Grannacha, signed by one Captain Bixxix-or-something, this day blah blah, hereby mustered into the Alderaanian Mercenary Force. Benefits to include standard pay, double pay for dangerous sich-ee-ations, triple pay for wartime and holidays therein. Benefits to include full medical replacement of all available parts subject to signee's approval. That means, me boyos, that I am guaranteed a brand new eye to replace this one 'ere what got all burned up the other day. Even Shedfall couldn't argue with it, and bless his soul, I don't think he ever put his heart into the argument. And tomorrow be one of me holidays, so I'll be collectin' triple pay again."

Pemwik watched the two-one-bee plucking charred scales from the Trandoshan's singed hand with a kind of fascination. Even the grunts got a crash course in basic survival biology back in infantry training. Burns were covered in some detail; thermal, chemical, and radiation. She knew that what the lizard has was not the worst, but certainly the most painful kind. With those scales, he was virtually immune to the kind they called first-degree, and if he'd had deep third-degree burns, he wouldn't have felt a thing. He just sat there though, while the droid removed the ruined scales and sprayed on a synthetic covering to speed healing. The droid had mentioned twice that it had no good topical sedative compatible with Trandoshan biochemistry, Kah had acted as if it wasn't a problem. The Trandoshan had refused to even consider general anesthetic. He sat perfectly still as the scales were plucked one by one.
Pemwik winced for him. She needed something to take her mind off of it. Her nose was running, her eyes were watering, and she was going to give herself a fit if she had to watch one more scale pulled.
A tanned Zabrak entered and fiddled with the control console. He looked at Pemwik and nodded. Sifer was the resident computer genius, though the manner in which he’d acquired his skills was seldom questioned. His records didn’t show any information, but then again he had frequently been asked to hack Imperial databases and communications networks, so his own record was probably child’s play. He plugged a datapad into a receptacle, nodded to himself in satisfaction, and left – tucking the datapad into his belt.
"Listen Kah, we don't know how long we'll have before they come back for Buzzard. Maybe we should do what the droid says, and freeze him for a while." She turned back to Kah and the droid.
"He is not dead, Lieutenant Pemwik. He is sleeping." Kah didn't turn to look at her, they'd had the conversation twice already. He stared at the bacta tank instead. In it floated a naked human, with grievous injuries.
"I know Kah, he's going to make the diagnosis computer blow a circuit. Every few minutes I have to turn the alarms off." That much was true; the alarms had a kind of deadman-reset switch that ensured that someone would notice the highly abnormal readings from the patient in Buzzard's only bacta tank. The patient was indeed confounding the medical droids, and had to have his priority constantly reclassified. If there had been any other wounds that required bacta treatment, the tank would have had other customers. The mortally wounded Shedfall had needed the tank badly, but that had been before Buzzard's recapture. He hadn't survived for treatment, and by good (or bad) luck, the wounds the troopers had were either minor enough to make the tank overkill, or had already killed them. Dallet was a marginal case. The tank wasn't much more than a very complicated antiseptic; he was beyond hope of immediate repair.
Pemwik sneezed. She hated medbays.
"You may remove him from the tank. He will not heal anyway until he regains consciousness," Kah said placidly.
"Kah, he's not even really asleep either. I mean, he only breathes like once a minute. It's probably a reflex, you heard the droid."
He turned to look at her finally, when the droid had dispensed the last of its synthetic skin and trundled over to a trash container.
"He is hiding, Miss Pemwik. He is hiding from the Empire, and what they did to him. He is hiding from us, and from himself."
"Well, make him stop hiding. If we have to move, he's gonna be damned heavy to carry-"
"I carried him here, " Kah interrupted coarsely. "I can carry him further."
"Sure Kah, but if he wakes up out there away from the bacta tank or our droid, he'll die anyway."
"The Jedi were very adept at healing even mortal wounds." Kah said, with a kind of reverence and sadness mixed together. "It was said that they only died when they wanted to. Not entirely true, but not entirely fantasy."
"That was a long time ago Master Kah, " Fiti said quietly. "Ancient history. The Jedi are dead and gone. We've got to put him on ice, and get you two out of here." Kah said nothing.
"I'm going to go talk to the CO again, but it's not going to change a thing. If they come for Buzzard again, we're getting some EVAC boats, and we're getting the hell out of here. If Dallet's not on ice by then, he'll start to rot. Either way, we're getting out of here."

I was hiding. I was still, I was quiet. At first, I'd felt myself assuming the timeless nature of the wind, and rocks, and sand of the backwater dustball I was stuck on. That was when things were still relatively normal. And by normal I mean being drugged, tortured, drugged more and tortured more, beaten to within an inch of my life, stifling another life with the power of the Dark Side, and then surrendering that inch I mentioned before to death. After that, things got wierd.
There is a stillness that isn't easily understood, and I spent some time there. Our astronomists know that this universe, with all its varied galaxies and systems, started in some cosmic expansion, and spread out in all directions from that point. Some untold trillions of years ago everything decided to move away from one place at inconceivable speeds, leaving it empty of both matter and potential. It wasn't just empty for now, it was always going to be empty. Everyting was always going to be rushing away from it, forever. That's where I was.
The stillness was as if I'd stood motionless while the whole universe sped away from me, as if I were that once hot and living center, and suddenly I became a space whose only purpose was to remain forever devoid of anything. It was a good place to make decisions, because it had quite literally no distractions.
You might ask yourself what I'd have to consider at that point. You'd probably come up with 'how to get back to normal', but that wasn't the important question.
"What are you?" Kah had asked. That used to be the important question. I had answered it with "a failure", and I'd been right. I wasn't a failure any more. For perhaps the first time in my memory (I won't say my life, because this probably didn't qualify) I had observed clearly the difference between wrong and right, and I had actually chosen the right. On purpose too, not just because it was easiest.
The question had been answered, and had changed. "What will you become?" I knew what the Force wanted me to become. I knew what Kah wanted me to become. Petra wanted me to become another slave. I even knew what Zillik wanted.
The Force wanted a Jedi, perfect Templar of power and goodness. Kah wanted a hunter; balanced in skill and power, determined and dogged. Zillik wanted to get the hell out of this nowhere and back into a bar. Every choice had a cost. Some were hidden, some were open. Of all the options, Zillik's longing for cowardice and profit was the most honest.
All I wanted was peace and quiet, and maybe some decent booze.

"We're moving out Kah, and you're coming with us. We'll need to put Dallet to rest." Fiti Pemwik wasn't happy about it, but every hour spent fretting over it lessened her concern. The man was a stranger to her, after all. She had no military inclination to owe him anything, and he certainly wasn't the kind of man that inspired loyalty or trust on first sight. In fact, she'd had Sifer do a little snooping on the network for one Dallet Greenstar, and found no history. No record of any kind. When they'd stripped him before dunking him into the bacta tank, she'd searched his belongings. Kah either had noticed and not cared, or had been too preoccupied to notice. It didn't take her long to sort out Dallet's real name, and Zillik's rap sheet was considerably more colorful than she'd imagined. Drug manufacture, drug sale, drug smuggling, contraband smuggling, and even a footnote with references to recent dealings with a local Rebellion unit. Not a storied past to be sure, more like a sordid one. She'd be doing him and Kah a favor by unplugging him, putting a round (or three, she wasn't sure how many it'd take - all things considered) through him, and burying him where the local predators wouldn't get at him. The man was clinically dead, and while it was never pleasant, dealing with the dead was something Pemwik was getting better at.
"Dallet and I will stay then, Lieutenant. Thank you for your concern."
"Kah, when the Imperials get here, they're going to make you wish you'd died in the Depot!" She raised her voice. Until recently she'd been a Sergeant, and every drill sergeant is imbued with the magical force of authority by that rank. She tried it on Kah. It failed. "There's word that they're going to break the Hutt atmospheric flight blockade Kah. Do you know what that means?"
"They will likely bomb the town."
"Not 'likely', they will! They'll blow you and that precious corpse to bits."
"Dallet-cha will awaken before the attack if the Force wills it." Kah seemed implacable, as always.
"Look Kah, we don't have any air support. We're shipping out, and you're coming with us. I didn't rescue this Zillik character just to see him incinerated."
"You would not be able to restrain me, Fiti Pemwik. And he is Dallet, not Zillik. He would not thank you for reminding him of what he was."
"Yeah, I read his rap sheet, he was quite the criminal."
"We all have pasts, some roads that lead to today are shrouded in darkness."
"Whatever. I'm going to go talk to Stark about this. He agrees with me. Actually, he told me I should stun you witless, and bag up Dallet, and tie you both over a speeder."
Kah did not respond.

Pemwik approached the little building serving as the headquarters. Sifer stepped out, and saluted. He left without comment, even when Fiti raised an eyebrow at him. She’d have to remember to ask him about that later.
“Sir. I came to ask you about the Greenstar situation sir, I’m sure you’ve read my report.”
“Yes, Miss Pemwik, I’ve read it. The truth is Lieutenant, that we aren't going anywhere except deeper into the desert until we can get some air support, or at least an EVAC." Stark frowned furiously at his datapad, tapping instructions in and then muttering to himself. Pemwik was interrupting him again, and he wasn't best pleased. He was new to this command, and his days seemed filled with equal parts terror and tedium.
"Sir, they did save my life in the raid-"
"I know Pemwik, but they're not soldiers. They're civilians. We can't make them do anything. If they want to get themselves killed in this dust-trap, we let them."
Pemwik thought furiously. She knew she had no reason for this much concern, but between Kah's impenetrable stubbornness, and Dallet's seemingly miraculous survival (if it could be called survival) of Imperial interrogation, she had a gut feeling that the two fools were meant for more than atomization. She'd been in the army so long, she'd forgotten how to deal with normal people, who didn't jump when she said jump, or shoot when she... inspiration struck.
"Sir, have we filed our request for new recruits and equipment?"
"Pemwik, we file them every damned day. Yesterday I filed a request for a Mon-Cal cruiser. They didn't even blink before they denied it."
"What if I could provide you with two new recruits, and take care of those two civilians?"
"What do you think we are, a press gang?" Stark glared at her.
"Would you sign the order sir?" She stared right at him. She'd been his Lieutenant for less than a week, and if she backed down now, she might never regain her standing in his eyes. Of course, if this blew up in her face, she'd never get it back either. Slick move Fiti, she thought to herself. Real smooth. There was a long pause, while Stark turned the idea over in his head. Just getting her out of his HQ and busy had merit, and in all likelihood they'd all be dead in two days' time.
"Miss Pemwik, are you aware that there is a standard regulation regarding the impressment of non-citizens in times of war?"
"I am sir."
"Right. Well, I think you should scour Buzzard for any non-citizens, and for the good of the community you will immediately take them into custody for entry into service in Alliance Armed forces, Second Division, Second battalion, Tatooine Corps."
"Thank you sir."
"Fiti, if they screw up, it's your ass."
"I know sir." She saluted and left.

It stopped being quiet where I was. I can't really say it was all that comforting, but it wasn't all that distressing, and that was good enough. That place didn't know anything about humans or Galactic Wars or anything, not life nor death, not motion or action, just stillness. Not a place for a man, not even a dead one. It didn’t move away from me, I moved away from it.
I was somewhere now, a planet. It was like I was looking at the whole thing at once, not exactly a flyby-view, but more like one of those three-d montages the documentarians like to use on the holonet. Better though, because it was like being fifty places at once.
It was cold. It was windy. It wasn't the kind of cold that reminds you to wear an extra pair of socks, or to make sure the hydrolifts don't frost up on the cargo ramp. It was the kind of cold that said: Unless you plan ahead, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to freeze your skin and thicken your blood. Not a comforting place. Not a place meant for continuous sentient habitation, perhaps. Who knows though, there's wierder species than humans floating around out there, maybe one of them likes it. The question though, was: what was I doing there?
My viewpoint stabilized, and became a single scene, as if I was riding behind a set of eyes instead of a holo-bubble gripped by a drug-addled Bothan. There were people on this iceball, humans and aliens. They were all bundled up in layer upon layer of clothing. I guess they didn't know the planet hated them, and figured the could fight it out. They wouldn't be there long, I knew. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. My disembodied eyes drifted to a manmade cave, probably melted out of a glacier-side. I bet that ticked off the cold. There was a man there, not much older than a boy really. Bit younger than me. Looked like a prime target for some spice sale, but that thought drifted right on by. He turned to look at me, or at wherever my mysterious 'eyes' were riding, as if he could see me. As I watched, he began to glow, like he was covered in glowing bree-beetle juice on a summer's night. He glowed like an overcharged glowrod, and if I'd really had eyes, they would have been watering with the intensity. This guy, I thought, I have to meet this guy. This guy knows things. I could have been imagining it, but I would almost swear he nodded at me. Then he pulled on some heavy goggles, mounted a two-legged beast, and rode out into the cold. I would have told him about the cold, but I didn't have any voice. As he cleared the doorway, I saw the glitter of something on his hip... a lightsaber! Of course, I thought. I have to find him, he's a Jedi. If I am to continue, I will need the knowledge he has. I guess, I thought wryly, this means that I'm going back. I wished I had lungs; it was a prime moment for an exasperated sigh.
The instant I began thinking about how I'd find my way back to some semblance of normalcy, I knew it wouldn't be too different. All I had to do was look around for my body, and climb back in. It was easy to spot it glowed in my mind's eye, hot with pain and hungry for a soul. Just the way I left it, I thought.

"And that is why, " Fiti finished with a smirk, "you and Dallet Greenstar are hereby conscripted." She smiled triumphantly.
"You cannot be serious, Lieutenant Pemwik." Kah's voice was as flat as his eyes.
"I am, and you should have told me you had prior service. In your case it's not a draft so much as a recall."
"I served on my home planet, as was required at the time. I would be happy to return there for duty. They were still loyal to the Senate when I last contacted them." Kah was flustered, but hiding it well.
"We will make every effort to secure your records and grant you an appropriate rank, Master Kah. But for now, you're private Kah, and you're subject to my authority. This means we're allowed to stun you silly if you don't do as you're told. And you're getting on that transport with us." The droid shuffled quietly in to tend the tank again. Kah had become suitably distracted to actually take his eyes off of it. “You said he was dead. The Rebellion is in such a state that it drafts the dead now?” He murmured to her.
“He’ll get a military funeral.” She reached by rote to silence the alarms again. They went dead before her fingers hit the right buttons.
“I don’t know exactly when we’re leaving Kah, but I want you ready to travel. I think we should see to Dallet before morning, so we can be ready to leave if we have to.”
“We might, “ Kah said slowly, “be here for weeks. Surely you need not bury him tonight.”
“We might leave in five minutes. You don’t want to leave him as food to the scavengers…” she stopped mid-sentence, realizing something was wrong. She looked down at the control panel. The alarms hadn’t come back on. “Well, “ she said, “this is…”
“Dallet-cha breathes? Where is the droid?” Kah cast about, then left the room abruptly. He returned quickly, shoving the two-one-bee before him. The droid attended to the controls, lacking the evident astonishment of the onlookers.

I climbed as far out of the bacta as I could. I was weak, hungry, and had a headache that neutron pixie couldn’t have cured. I got my mouth clear of the pinkish liquid, and spit out the breathing tube.
“Don’t be burying me just yet Fiti.” I flashed her my best ‘hey, I’m back from the dead and you’re a female of my species’ grin, but the effect was ruined when my pain receptors reminded me that much of my face was still broken. The grin turned into a wince, which turned into a ragged coughing fit, and made bacta spill all over the place.
“Dallet-cha! You are badly wounded, return to the liquid.” Kah glared, Fiti sneezed.
“How long was I in there? How come I’m not healed up?”
“You were resting, Dallet-cha. You have returned. Rest some more, and we will speak on it in the morning.”
Fiti was speechless. The moment didn’t last.
“You’re drafted. You’re private GreenStar now. You’re excused for being out of uniform, this time.”
“You’re crazy Sergeant, I did my time with the Imperial gang, and they didn’t want me anymore. Besides, snot-nosed sergeants don’t get to draft people.”
“I’m commissioned now private, and when you’re healthy, you’ll be digging latrines for that remark.” She spun on her heel and left. About five seconds later I had the bright idea to try to mockingly salute her, but the droid probably wouldn’t have understood.
“Kah, what in the twelve hells is going on?”
“Dallet-cha, I have no idea.”
“Drafted? What’d you do, go drinking with her?”
“I have not left your tank.”
“How um, creepy of you.”
“I was gravely concerned.”
“Me too Kah, I was dead. Well, mostly.”
“You were hiding.”
“That too. So what’s up, is Fiti in charge now?”
“Lieutenant Pemwik was promoted by Shedfall. He died while you were… indisposed.”
“This is not what I had planned, Kah.” This wasn’t what I’d expected to come back to. And Pemwik didn’t seem to be all that grateful about my heroics on her behalf.
“What did you have planned, Dallet-cha?”
“Well, alright I didn’t have anything planned. Except some hard liquor and a couple hours of sleep.”
“I think you might be able to see to those things, Dallet. Once you heal. Now go back to sleep and let that insufferable machine do its job.”
“I will, but I wanted to tell you something, about what happened back there.” I needed to tell him, not so much for praise or attention, but because I was starting to realize that his instruction represented a huge risk, and that taking me on as a student might very well be the death of him. I wanted him to know that I’d seen the risk, and survived.
“That was days ago, Dallet-cha. We need not speak of it now.” Kah seemed evasive.
“There was a soldier Kah. He tortured me. I wanted to kill him, I almost did… I was so strong. It was the dark side.”
“You do not wear the taint of it, my student. One of the fallen would not have surrendered to death the way you did.”
“I know, now anyway. But I wanted it so bad Kah, it was worse than missing the stim. I still want it. I’m not sure I’ll always be able to hold it back.” I’m not big on honesty, I’m not comfortable with it. But the Lizard deserved the truth. He’d earned that much anyway. “Maybe I’m not the best choice of students. I’ll understand if you want out of this. Pemwik can stuff her conscription up her – “
“Dallet-cha,” he interrupted, “you humble me. I have known Jedi in the past. I have known the arrogance, the stubbornness of them. Always they claimed strength and surety, always they would claim to be untempted. We are all tempted, Jedi or not. We are all tempted to exact vengeance, seek pleasure, overpower our adversaries.”
“I know Kah, but this was different. If you’d have been there, you’d have seen what I did to him. I damn near killed him without laying a hand on him. I was more angry than I’ve ever been.” I almost lost my mind, I added silently. Almost lost everything.
“Dallet-cha, I was there. Who do you think carried you back here? I saw what he did. He confessed it with his own mouth to me. It was I that found you.”
“He lived then? I was afraid he’d die anyway.”
“He lived only long enough to claim to have killed you. I saw that you were dead. I too was tempted.”
There was a long moment where I could hear the machine circulating the warm liquid around me, and folks moving around outside.
“You killed him?”
“I crushed his life out like an insect, Dallet-cha. I might as well have run him down with a speeder, or landed your ugly ship on him; there was no skill, no finesse, no sanctity to his death. There was only anger, and power, and revenge.”
I stared at him, my jaw still throbbing in pain. I let myself slip back down into the tank, my vision blurring and pinking when my eyes submerged. It felt strange to think of Kah as possessing emotion; hearing his unflappably calm voice in the face of the blazing heat, the waterless, dusty days in the desert over and over again in my mind. If there was anyone I could trust to see things coldly and logically, it was Kah.
“We faced the same test, Dallet. I am proud that you chose wisely. I am ashamed that I could not see beyond my rage. Always it drives me.”
“Kah, it’s alright. We both made it, and that guy had it coming. He deserved it.”
“Of course he did, Dallet-cha. I do not mourn his loss.”
“Then why are you so upset?” For Kah, this was the equivalent of running around screaming.
“I am upset because I may be the only teacher of the last Jedi, a group of brave souls which I have myself helped to exterminate. I fear I will not be enough.”
I pulled myself back up, and grabbed the breather-feed so I could stay under for a while.
“I’m not the last, Kah. Not yet.” With that, I let myself sink back in to the warm bath, and slept.

11-20-2004 04:48 PM

<3

Space, Baleetra System

The sleek white ship floated above the dark planet, locked in synchronous orbit. There had been no hailing communications from orbital control, no inspection by planetary or systemic defense forces, no scan by automated droid-satellites. The sleek white ship had not been distressed by the lack of interaction with some kind of ground control, it was beyond caring.
Navigational computers had become a technological work of art. Ecliptics and azimuths, black holes and white dwarves, the navicomp was the composer of a symphony of epic proportions. All of space was moving, emptiness becoming filled; mass and inertia, planets spinning away from one place towards another, falling predictably towards a center that they’d never meet. The motion of a tiny body (like a sleek white ship) through these extraordinary forces was a prodigious exploitation of physics, borrowing gravity from one place, speed from another, and turning a million straight-line vectors into a graceful propulsive curve.
Normal navicomputers operated with a variety of redundancies and fail-safes. A functional navicomp was virtually impossible to mathematically swindle, hard to disorient, and if properly programmed would rarely lose a hand of sabacc. A well-coded navicomp could plot a survivable course through a field of multiple black-holes while maintaining enough gravity and atmosphere to keep any of the thousands of sentient creatures it might be ferrying warm and comfortable. A navigational computer was solicitous, informative, and caring. It was programmed with the overwhelming desire to see no harm done to its occupants, regardless of their capacity to do harm to themselves. A good navicomp was an inspired artist, and the safety of its every cargo was its magnum opus.
Aboard the sleek white ship though, someone had murdered the navicomputer. It had locked into a stationary orbit almost as an afterthought, as a safety mechanism so simple and rudimentary that it was practically physical in nature, rather than digital. The engines and the spaceframe suggested an orbital gravitational constant, and the skin had required temporary relief from the system’s damaging radiation. The planet’s night was long, a predicted nine-hundred hours. Locking on the dark side fulfilled all of those requirements.
She stood in the fresher, leaving the door open behind her. A functional navicomputer would have reminded her that leaving all compartment and bulkhead doors open was poor atmospheric discipline, but that solicitous device had been destroyed. She stared into a flat plate that projected her image back to her. In its basic form it was a mirror, although with a little creativity the cameras could be moved to accommodate non-frontal eye placement, and if done right, the ‘mirror’ could be made to display the back of a humanoid’s head instead of the front. This humanoid wasn’t concerned with amusement though, and examined herself with a flat stare.
It was hard for her to remember how long she’d been aboard the sleek white ship. In her mind there was the blurry painful part, and the sharp-hot part when the voice started talking to her. It was a hungry voice, and it seemed to take things away from her while they talked. She knew the voice was a figment of her overstressed mind, and the more she thought about it, the fainter the voice became. She could make it disappear altogether sometimes, but it always came back. Besides, she’d been in space a long time (at least it felt that way) and while the voice took things from her mind, at least it left her with some company. She couldn’t actually claim it was satisfying to hear the litany of anger and rage that it seemed to generate from the memories and moments it devoured in her mind, but it was marginally comforting to feel not so alone for a little while. On the trip to the Baleetra system, Petra had realized that she was just about the most alone person in the whole universe.
She could see it in her eyes most easily. Her face still bore the yellowish tinge of mostly-healed bruises and not enough sunlight. Her split lips had healed, and the on her cheek had faded to thin dark lines. Her body was healing on the outside, but the voice was still hungry on the inside, and it showed in her eyes. She left the mirror active and walked out to the cockpit.
The navicomp had been savagely delivered from its cabinet onto the deck of the cockpit, and hacked to pieces. Some units had been left intact, and some portions had been virtually annihilated by the previous owner of the vessel. The voice ranted about him frequently, and it laughed in a satisfied way. Petra didn’t feel very satisfied with the memory of the previous owner, but she couldn’t remember exactly why. She absently clutched the end of her left arm, where her left hand used to be. The voice hadn’t eaten that memory yet, and she wished it had.
She curled up in the pilot’s chair, and ate another of the protein rations. Staring out of the planet-side window, she couldn’t make out any of the features of the terrain down on the planet; it was nighttime below her. There were no sources of light down on the planet that she could see, and the computer couldn’t be coaxed into providing her with an enhanced image. She finished her meal, and walked idly back to the living quarters, shushing the voice in her head with some concentration.
She’d been living in these quarters for a long time. Much of the time she’d enjoyed, when the ship had been doubling as a home. The voice had glutted itself on those memories, but there were enough of them left for her to remember the gist of her time on Tatooine.
There’d been a man, a human named Dallet. He’d betrayed her, he’d done nothing but constantly betrayed her, but for a time she’d believed in his decency and even thought she’d loved him. He’d been one of the very few people that knew her dream, to become a Jedi. She’d been granted a vision of him, years ago, and had foolishly dreamt as well that he’d share the vision. In the end, she’d broken free of him, but those days still lingered in her mind as warm, exuberant times. She sorted through their clothes, kicking his possessions into a pile. From her own belongings, she extracted a tight-wrapped set of undergarments favored in the desert. She stripped down, and dressed in the brown garments. From another container she removed a tube of metal, and hefted it in her hand. She checked a readout on the tube, and satisfied left the quarters for the cargo hold, the biggest portion of the vessel.
She’d dismantled the work table days, maybe weeks ago. She remembered that it had made her frightened, so she’d cut it to bits. The burned-looking refuse of that workbench lay in small piles all over the bay. She took a steadying breath, gripped the tube in her hand, and closed her eyes. Some of the pieces lifted from the piles as if they were in zero-gee, but she remained firmly attached to the floor. This was a game the voice and she had played so often that she could almost do it herself. She let the voice handle the junk, while she practiced.
A fist-sized chunk left its family of garbage and struck towards her as if thrown. The tube in her hand sparked to with a menacing hiss, and a harsh beam of light lanced out from it. The beam terminated abruptly, turning the tube into a hilt, and the beam into a blade. The blade smoothly intercepted the offending chunk and made it into two smaller chunks, vaporizing a portion of it in its passing.
More chunks separated from their families and began to assault her. Sometimes they were clever and took curving arcs, sometimes they were brutal and drove directly for her. She became the sun of a very small, very turbulent little system; her body providing the pull, and her blade providing the energy. The result was always the same; more chunks with less mass. The blade made her eyes water if she looked at it, but it killed the table a thousand times, and it made her feel better. Not good, but better.

An instant before the ship broke orbit, she felt a change that heralded it. She woke, rose, and stepped into the cockpit. The navicomp displayed a pitiful readout, indicating that it had been suborned by orbital authority. It didn’t respond to queries, refused to relinquish control to her, and eventually stopped responding at all. It powered down and restarted, but she ignored it. She watched the planet grow larger in the main windows until the were obscured by the heat-shielding. She walked back to her room and found her Tatooine garb again. It was probably not right for the atmosphere, but the smell of it reminded her of happier times, and it was comfortable. Besides, the thought darkly, it’s not going to stop blaster bolts any better than something fancy. She tucked her lightsaber into one of the folds of the wrapped garment and walked back to the cargo bay.

The sniffer cycled, and reported a clean, human-tolerant atmosphere. She hit the control for the cargo bay door, and the ship’s mechanical jaw dropped open. She stood at the verge where the flooring became ramp as the wall tilted away, and gripped her lightsaber tightly. She’d been dragged to this system as a bounty, and while no longer captive to any hunter, she was a captive of circumstance, and she knew her options were limited. The voice had told her to remain cautious, but it had also counseled conflict over compromise. She had learned a certain grim lesson aboard the High Tide, and preferred violence as a known quantity rather than the trickeries of negotiation.
The door dropped, and she stepped out onto the ramp. On either side of the ramp stood stormtroopers, two ranks deep. The first was kneeling, the second leaning forward over the first. Both ranks had rifles trained on her. Their armor wasn’t the polished white she remembered, but a dark ashen gray, almost black. Not one of them flinched or fidgeted when she ignited her saber.
Be ready, the voice crooned happily to her. We can take care of these. We have been waiting for this!
She felt a kind of exhilarating anger well up in her, crushing her fear and concern like an insect beneath her boot. She readied herself ward away blaster bolts as she had the torture table before, and the Voice had something planned to make them stop shooting until she could cut them…
“Clearly, we have been misinformed.” A man walked up center of the aisle made by the troopers, until he largely obscured their line of fire, and filled most of her field of view. He wore a charcoal black suit, with a black cloak billowing behind him.
“We were notified that you might be held prisoner, Miss Gullings. We were only taking this precaution in case your captor had planned on changing the terms of our arrangement.”
She remained silent, and the saber remained lit. The Voice had been raving about killing the troopers, but had become eerily silent when the man appeared. She stared at him.
Human, tall, well built. Had a kind of wiry frame, but seemed to drip with confidence. It was telling that he seemed unconcerned about the lightsaber.
“A bounty hunter took me captive. I escaped. He was taking us here, “ she said finally, “to sell me. You were the buyer.”
“Yes, “ he said, smiling. “I’ve spent a great deal of money looking for you. The price was quite high, and I stipulated that you be brought to me alive and unharmed.”
“That’s not what Spak’ta said.” She moved her shortened arm out in front of her body. “He said the offer was dead or alive.”
“I am going to make bit of a leap here and guess that he might have told you several other things that might also be untrue as well.”
She pondered that. He made a curt gesture, and the troopers snapped to attention, then left.
He extended a gloved hand to her, standing on the ramp. She took it as a gesture demanding her lightsaber.
“This stays with me. I’ll kill whoever tries to take it.”
His gesture turned into an expansive one, as if he were merely showing her the landing bay.
“Of course, I would have it no other way.” His sweeping hand moved down to his cloak, and slid it aside from his right hip. “I wouldn’t surrender mine without a fight either,“ he said, smiling.
“What do you want with me?” He’d turned his back on her, as if expecting her to follow. She extinguished the saber.
“I want a student, Petra Gullings. I want a follower, a companion, a friend in these terrible times.” He stopped, and turned back to her.
“But you’re not a Jedi, you’re with the Empire.”
He chuckled. “Where better to hide from their oppression than within their very machine? Out here in the middle of nowhere, on a system I have repeatedly redesignated as ‘officially useless’, with a company of hand-picked men. We are safe here. Oh my, where are my manners?” He bowed slightly, in archaic greeting. “I am Muud, Colonel Forge Muud. Welcome to the Baleetra monitoring station, Petra Gullings.”
“I’m not your friend, or your student. I want to go back home.”
“Certainly, you are free to leave.”
“Free to leave?”
“If you are foolish enough to turn down what I have to offer, then I have no use for you as a student. Or as anything else.”
“What do you have to offer me?”
“Power. Real power. You have felt some of it, or you wouldn’t be here. You would never have survived. But what you’ve had is only a taste. A drop of wine when you could have the whole cask. What I have to show you is a whole ocean of power compared to that single taste.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. I should leave right now.”
“Possibly,” he smiled again, “you should. But you should at least let us repair your hand while you’re here, and get a decent meal.”
“You can fix this?”
“We have a full surgical suite, Madam. We could certainly fit you with a synthetic.”
“Alright, but I’m not agreeing to anything, just medical treatment. I can pay.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Petra.” He motioned her towards the hangar door, lit by harsh floodlights against the overbearing darkness of the planet. “You are my guest. And please, call me Forge.” The door slid noisily open, and they stepped inside.

11-23-2004 08:00 PM

<3