Beyond - Legends Shark Kibble: The Datapad of Student ISBTECH 815761 - Update 1-1-15

The next part is complete and will be up soon. My muse barely rains, but occasionally the silly thing pours.

Tarsier: Glad you liked the post. Thanks for the comment!



(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 2)

Since my search had turned up nothing in the pilot’s area (nor was there any sign of trouble in the barely lived-in room nearby that I assumed belonged to Barrett), I went back to carefully opening each door and checking every room in the ship. This took a lot longer than it would have if I hadn’t been worried about alerting intruders to my presence. At least I had my blaster again – the items in the ship’s locker had been untouched and I had gladly taken the opportunity to bring it along. Nothing seemed out of place anywhere in the Draigon’s interior rooms. Or at least, if anything was out of place I could not recognize the signs. There were no long-term residents on the shuttle apart from Captain Barrett, so most of the quarters were very clean.

There was no way in all the stars that I would enter any of the Inquisitors’ rooms uninvited unless I absolutely had to. Lesedi had always headed off towards the aft area, so I left that section of the ship alone after listening at each door. Silence, as I expected. If any of them were alive and trapped, it should have been impossible not to know about it. Inquisitors have ways of making themselves heard. Checking the other rooms for fellow passengers seemed to take forever but that was due to nerves more than anything. Neither Odon nor Bramer had left anything out of their hyper-organized clutter containment systems and I could not tell who was the proud owner of their very (very) shiny temporary living spaces. It was immediately clear that their rooms were not harboring anything out of the ordinary. Not so much as a dust mooka between them.

Zelenus seemed to have brought along everything he owned and allowed the mess to congregate on every surface. I could tell the quarters were his because of the algae tanks – there was some experiment he was working on for a class and Bramer had mentioned it before. Bramer was a man who disapproved of algae, with the reluctant exception of the stuff used to recycle ships’ air. Even though it wasn’t for curiosity’s sake, it felt a bit more personal than was comfortable to see a messy room and I backed out soon. If there had been a fight in there, nobody would ever know. And if somebody was hidden under the algae tanks, it would take a loading droid to excavate them.

Apart from the last-resort options of the Inquisitors’ lairs and the deep dark civilizations breeding in Zelenus’s old socks, there was only one place left to look. The expanse of the cargo bay seemed much larger in the dark. This was where intruders would have had to enter the ship, if they did so at all. I crouched down by the doorway, listening for the slightest sounds from inside. The door itself had been left open, and I felt a chill of fear travel down my neck at the perfectly normal sight. An open door didn’t mean someone had broken in, but I wanted more and more to turn right around and find some place to hide.

Ridiculous, especially since I had dealt with more obviously dangerous things before, and even been in a few outright fights for my life. Actually won two-and-a-half without the intervention of rescuers, too. Don’t laugh so hard, datapad. Half counts when your opponent has toe-claws the size of butcher knives and kicks like a gualama in a thunderstorm. The fact that I missed the appearance of his Nikto pirate buddy while trying to dodge the Toenails of Death was pretty inevitable. Grania later told me that I was probably the first patient in the history of my homeworld to be treated for a Tiss’shar mauling and a vibro-sword lodged in the shoulder in one go. By the local veterinarian. I felt so special. All right, so there was some reason for concern about my ability to avoid trouble – especially now that I was far from my home ground and wouldn’t have Rhajani around to come and sharpshoot the stardust out of my attackers this time.

Liquid glistened on the floor of the cargo bay and I moved forward hesitantly, worried about an ambush and halfway expecting to find carnage. The few details picked up by the night-visor were difficult to judge. I spooked myself several times with the passage of my own shadow between the faint glow of the air system readout in the corner and the shimmering trail of fluid. My own breathing and heartbeat seemed much too loud.

As I drew closer, the reason for the goop on the floor became clear. Not blood, but something almost as disturbing. It was a trail of bacta fluid that had spilled over the edge of an opened tank. I checked my memory of the other day and felt my breath catch. I wanted to be wrong, but was certain that was where we had left Isurus after Dachat. There was no believable way he could have done this himself. The tank had no internal controls other than the emergency signal and even if he were yet another Force-user, there was no way he could have climbed out and gone for a walk. People with burns and blood loss and partial leg amputations couldn’t do that sort of thing, even if they were blessed with “magical” parasites. It wasn’t physically possible.

I followed the path of bacta towards the main loading area. Here and there I could just barely make out tracks from at least two different pairs of boots. The larger pair probably belonged to Barrett or one of our other male passengers, since the treadmarks were more similar to those on shoes used for Imperial working uniforms. The others were slightly smaller (though probably also from a male if made by a human) and looked like they belonged to a different type of footwear with deeper treads – possibly something designed for wilderness trekking. The specialized gripping devices used on ship-maintenance shoes didn’t seem to be there, though it was hard to tell. The tracks were smeared and indistinct as though the person had been struggling to balance here and there – carrying Isurus, I thought. At least that made more sense than him walking off on his own. The “Imperial” shoe marks overlaid the mystery boots in several places. Pursuing the others?

Whatever had happened, there was some kind of trouble here. Nearer to the exit, the trail became even more chaotic with bacta spattered all over. A gooey person-sized puddle lay in one corner and I could only assume that the mystery intruder had dropped or laid down Isurus there. The floor was scored with burns and scratches that had not been there before today. I knew that floor intimately, seeing as the ground was where I spent a good percentage of my sparring sessions. There was a faint acrid smell in the air.

Finally getting a look at the door to the loading ramp made me break my up-to-then careful silence with a groan of frustration. Someone had opened the small external access hatch and sprayed sealant foam through onto the edges of the door and the control panel, then finished up by closing the hatch and spraying that as well. I sniffed at the orange foam. Durable industrial sealant. Stang, blast, and barking gundarks in a hydrocleaner. That door was the only one onboard designed to be able to open without electrical power in an emergency. Depending on the exact mixture, it could be anywhere from hours to months before the seal would weaken enough to be broken. The sealant was a fairly common type, easy to transport and common on ships. No telling whether it had been applied by some nameless bad guys to keep me in (forever!) or by one of the Draigon’s passengers to protect the ship and its contents.

As I leaned back against the wall and struggled to quiet my reaction to being locked in, I couldn’t help but wonder who in the galaxy would go to such trouble to – as far as I could tell – quietly and painstakingly break into our shuttle just to kidnap an injured man from a bacta tank. Bizarre. My immediate suspicion was that it was something to do with whoever (or whatever) had taken a chunk out of poor Isurus in the first place. But the kind of expertise and obsession it would take to successfully trail our shuttle through one of the nastiest hyperspace routes in the galaxy, all to recapture someone they had nearly torn apart already… that was downright disturbing.

No matter what had happened, being taken out of the bacta couldn’t have been good for Isurus. He wouldn’t last long without the extra support provided by the medicine and life support systems. If he was still alive at all, he must be scared out of his wits. The strange cry that I had heard on Dachat before meeting the group echoed in my memory and made me shiver. Now that I thought about it, there was something familiar about that sound, but I could not identify it to save my life. Well, that was just going to have to bother me forever.

What I at first mistook for a dead spider hanging off the side of the loading ramp control panel turned out to be the powerless body of the little droid that had accompanied Bramer and Zelenus on Dachat. The gripping pincers at the tips of its forelegs remained fixed to the edge of the panel, apparently trapped in the moment when the machine had been disabled. Cautious prodding provoked no signs of life and there was no response when I used the small magnetic tools from my kit to gently loosen the droid’s feet and remove it from the panel.

If I had to be trapped in a silent and hopefully empty ship, at least maybe I could gather a little forensic evidence from the little guy. That might at least give me some hints as to whether I should leap out blasting or stand by politely when and if anyone tried to get back in the ship. I could of course hide, but there are a limited number of hiding places on a Sigma and sooner or later I would be found. Very embarrassing if the finder were a friendly face. Or, alternatively, Inquisitor Ombyrne the Choke-Happy.

By now, I was pretty certain that I had the ship to myself. Nevertheless, I found myself creeping back to my quarters and glancing over my shoulder every other step. It was uncomfortable to think that there had been a life-and-death struggle onboard and I had snored my way right through it. Exhaustion: 1, sensory awareness: 0. It wouldn’t be the first time. Without anyone to shake me out of my slumber, I would have slept right through quite a few things: the earthquake of ’32, the time the Meurics’ tusk cats dragged down a feral anooba outside my window, the distant sounds of the first attack made by Slone’s pirates on Tulekahju…

After hanging some sheets around the door to my room on the off chance that there were still others prowling the ship, I turned on the old datapad’s screen for light and set to work on examining the droid. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, but I already knew that. The access panel for programming and maintenance was tiny and it took nearly an hour to locate. Fortunately, I had a retrieval datascanner that I had brought as an extra backup in case of the catastrophic demise of whatever (non-busted, functional) datapad I bought on Karkaryss. Unfortunately, the results came back as gibberish when accessed through a persnickety busted datapad. Gaaaah. And it looked like such an expensive droid too. Hopefully only the memory was damaged. While I was a little wary of causing further problems with my prying, I decided to attempt to recharge the machine. It was possible that the droid might have the ability to interpret its own data where my outdated datapad could not.

While the droid was hooked up to the recharger, I took the time to pack a small bag of traveling supplies just in case I had to exit the ship and run. Ration bars (Granite Slug Crunch, yum yum), glowrod, extra power pack for the blaster, water canteen, hydration tablets, light jacket, small medkit (should have brought that the first time, what was I thinking?), a few tools that looked useful, and the fake ID that I had been given for the Dachat trip. It occurred to me as I stood staring at the bursting contents of the bag that my packing skills could probably use some work. Surely it wasn’t all necessary.

My heart lurched when I heard a soft clink from the corner of the room. I jumped up and assumed a defensive position, then had to laugh when I saw that it was only the droid untangling itself from the charger. Evidently it felt revived enough and wasn’t going to sit still any longer. Too late, I realized that the droid was making an escape. It scurried out the doorway and vanished into the darkness of the shuttle’s interior. I cursed, pulled the night-visor back down over my eyes, and followed, mentally kicking myself for letting the machine out of my sight.



Notes:

Mookas are fluffy little domesticated animals with fur and feathers. They come from the dreaded kids’ Star Wars series with the Jedi Prince and the telepathic whales and Laser Eyes Leia the droid decoy. I was really desperate for any Star Wars related reading material in my misspent youth and I have no shame. None.

Gualamas are one of a few different equines native to Naboo (you can see a different kind, the gualaars, in Padmé’s funeral procession in ROTS.)

The Tiss’shar are reptilian aliens with several different subspecies. Most illustrations show them looking like a deinonychus relative minus the feathers and enormous talons. I decided they needed a type with the can-opener feet, because that would be cool.

Tusk cats are another Naboo animal. Some of Lydia’s former neighbors have several species of livestock and working animals from that world because they lived there at one point.

Anoobas are wolf-like creatures from Tatooine. They are known for escaping from captivity and forming packs in places very different from their native habitat, even surviving on Coruscant.

 

Love Zelenus' room! And Bramer "disapproves" of algae -

Half counts when your opponent has toe-claws the size of butcher knives and kicks like a gualama in a thunderstorm.
Nice!

Too late, I realized that the droid was making an escape.
Catch that droid!

So many lovely creatures in your endnotes. And for once I actually knew of a lot of them already (gualamas and gualaars are great, but guarlaras are my favorite ).

Can't wait for the next update!

 

Thanks! I really love the Naboo wildlife from the movies and books. One of the places in the SW galaxy that I would actually want to visit if they were real, as opposed to Tatooine, Mustafar, etc.; a lot of the planets have beautiful landscapes that I'm more than happy to admire from afar.

 

(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 3)



The droid was surprisingly hard to track. In most cases, you can easily locate a droid of any size by sound alone. This one seemed to possess a pittin’s silent feet. No telltale sounds hinted at the direction it had gone. I jogged through the hallways, peering into the corners and crevices. After several minutes of looking, I thought to check the cargo bay. Complex droids develop quirks over time, especially when damaged. Major trauma to their systems can cause odd behavior, including what seems to us organics like obsessive revisiting of the event. The runaway droid might have simply returned to the scene of the earlier fight. The cargo bay was as vast and dark as before. I walked over to the loading ramp door and poked at the sealant. Still not deteriorating.

A sharp pain lanced through my ankle and I yelled, hopping backwards and clunking against the wall with no grace whatsoever. What the – okay. After all my pointless wanderings, the little droid had come to find me. And had evidently lost its manners. Trails of lights blinked on and off along the machine’s legs and head, seeming unnaturally bright when seen through my night-visor. The insect-like, spindly-legged body danced around in a movement that reminded me of an irate driver who had just had their hoverspeeder rear-ended in rush hour traffic. The two delicate forelegs waved at me in what I was pretty sure was an invitation to fight. Then the droid began to make noise. From the few recognizable sounds that I could almost make out, it was trying to speak Binary at me.

Unfortunately for both of us, its speech functions seemed to have been affected by the recent ordeal and if I read the droid’s increasingly frantic scuttling movements right, it was becoming extremely frustrated. The first weak staticky buzzes soon trilled into incoherent, painfully high-pitched zeeeps and rubber band twanging sounds. I very slowly began to inch away – and nearly fell over again as the little droid charged, leapt, and landed squarely (and much too sharply) on my chest, chattering away like an enraged mechanical kelele bird.

“Oww. Those are not a droid shelf. Release your pincers.”

More Binary insults were peppered among the unreadable screeching. My new friend was gaining some vocabulary back, but not the good kind.

“Did you just call me – oww. A thousand times oww. Who taught you that word? Never mind. Stangit. Release and take your prickly little pincers over to my shoulder or else. Listen, I’ve been stuck sneaking around an empty locked ship of questionable safety for the last hour and change. I am worried, I am cranky, and you are stabbing me in a non-negotiable no-stab zone. I am dead sure that I have an “else” somewhere in my toolkit.”

We glared at each other. Bringing unblinking acid-green photoreceptors to a staring contest is cheating, in my humble opinion. I decided to forge ahead as though I had won and tapped my shoulder expectantly. Growing up surrounded by Imperials and felines of various stripes has its benefits when it comes to the skill of bluffing. The droid moved to my shoulder and seated itself with a much lighter grip.

“So, you’re trying to tell me something important but your language skills got a little fried. Can you show me a visual recording through the datapad back in my room?”

A sour short blaat of contempt greeted the suggestion. Aww, my poor old datapad was scorned by a droid a fraction of its size. Or so I thought until a tiny holographic display flickered into place before my eyes. Now I could see why the droid was so dismissive of the visual evidence. There were recorded images and even audio of what had happened. However, the figures of the beings moved so quickly that the droid’s photoreceptors couldn’t keep pace with them and what did appear was distorted. Blank glaring bright spots and strange-looking haloes danced across the projected image, obscuring the action almost entirely. The flaws in the image reminded me of the bright spots that appear when you press your fingers against your eyeballs with the lids closed. Every now and then something would swim into focus, only to disappear or move out of range. The audio was no help, sounding so garbled that I couldn’t even tell if anyone was speaking at all.

There were at least two beings, just as I had guessed from the footprints. The taller one rarely appeared, reduced to scattered flashes of the corner of a cloak and the glow of a lightsaber. The distortions clung to the figure’s outline and obscured his hands and face from view. That was an eerie sight, but I already had seen some of the strange things Inquisitors could do with electrical fields. It was the other being that made me blink and feel like the floor had dropped from under me when I finally spotted a clearer shot of his face.

Mr. Creepy? It couldn’t be, and there was no rational reason for it to be. Yet there he was, just for an instant before the holoimage suddenly blinked out and was gone. Okay, so now a random sleaze from the spaceport somehow followed us here, kidnapped Isurus, and disappeared, along with every sentient being on the shuttle except for me. And there was no way of telling who had actually sealed the exit. Fantastic.

Not to mention that none of it made a drop of sense. If this person was truly a random creep, then how could he have traced the Draigon’s path (especially when Barrett seemed to have a downright pathological need to scan for unwanted devices every time we left a stop – I don’t think he slept for 48 hours after we left Shullia, which perhaps explains a lot), navigated through the hazards of a secret Deep Core spacelane, and avoided the Interdictor patrols? No way. The galaxy’s got a considerable number of psychos who might try to isolate a lost girl if they spotted one wandering through the spaceport. But it was beyond the bounds of reason to think that such a person would just happen to possess the specific skills to trail the Draigon so far from our original encounter. It was too coincidental, and frankly depended way too much on this theoretical creep being focused on me somehow – which actually now didn’t seem to be the case. After all, as far as I could tell the intruder had gone straight for Isurus and set about taking him out of the tank.

Though I’m not an expert in the mental processes of deranged stalkers, “okay, we’ve risked disintegration by hyperspace accident and/or Interdictors to follow this girl from the spaceport, now let’s spend our precious time kidnapping a heavy, difficult-to-transport invalid from the bacta tank that just happens to be here” did not seem like an especially likely motive for our mystery intruder. This led me to the uncomfortable suspicion that I had seriously misjudged what was right before my eyes on Dachat.

“Show the face from the last part of the recording again,” I said and was impressed but not astonished that the droid managed to come up with just the picture that I needed to compare the man’s face to my memory. There was no denying that it was the same person I’d met on Dachat. I remembered my first glimpse of him from the corner of my eye. He wore ordinary spacer’s clothing, had an attractive but not unusual face, and carried a light travel bag over his back. The faded magenta tint to his skin hinted that he might be a near-human of some species I didn’t recognize. Nothing extraordinary about seeing a rare species in this crowd (which was quite a contrast to Shullia, where there were many aliens but only a couple dozen different species to be found.) At least three different necklaces were draped around his neck, marking him as either a fan of garish jewelry or a slower runner than the souvenir vendors. He was one anonymous being among many, moving along with a smooth, gliding walk that increased in speed much too quickly as he approached me. That change in gait screamed “predator” and set all of my defenses on high.

He smiled disarmingly, but there was something far too sharp in his gaze. “It’s a maze here, isn’t it?” he said sympathetically. “Ha, I’ll probably have to call my friends for directions back to my own ship and it’s not like I’ve never been here before. I can hardly believe the chaos every time.” He laughed. “I almost think they hide entire corridors from one visit to the next. Just the ones that I need, of course. The builders must have been related to the barves who built Zirtran’s Anchor. Someday the whole place will sink into a dimensional rift and disappear for the next hundred years. Personally, I just hope it doesn’t take me or my crew with it. The food here is not something you want to be stuck with for the rest of your life.” The spacer’s wrinkle-nosed expression made me laugh in spite of myself.

“It’s okay,” I told him in a mock-soothing voice. “Within a few months you’d be reduced to hunting mynocks and fellow travelers with a sharpened souvenir umbrella, anyway. Unless the mystery meat in Bolooga’s Bantha Burgers really is vervikk after all. Then I suppose you all might live off the local rodent colony for years.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re morbid?” he asked rhetorically.

The entire laundry list of people who have told me I’m morbid could take years to recite. “What, me? I’m not morbid at all, just thorough,” I said. “You have to think these things through. Otherwise when disaster strikes you have no plan. And whatever will you do without an umbrella?” My best stern-eyebrows, this-is-a-serious-talk expression got an appreciative burst of laughter from the spacer.

He said, “Maybe I should just hire you. You can be the Keeper of the Hunting Umbrella. Wouldn’t be any stranger than some of the other job descriptions I’ve known. There was this Ugnaught back when I was hauling freight with an outfit from Bespin…”

We’d fallen into a comfortable stride, moving along slowly but surely as he babbled on about the colorful characters he’d met in his years of hauling cargo. Wait a minute. Where exactly were we going? This was still a reasonably well-traveled area, but in the back of my mind the sequence of our journey played out again and something about it tripped the alarm that had inexplicably faded away to nothing during our conversation. Suddenly I recognized what was happening.

He was herding me, just as carefully and professionally as a tusk cat guides its charges. Olana, the dominant female of the Meurics’ small pride, would amble along beside the most stubborn of nerfs with tireless patience until she could subtly direct the animal back into the herd. Nerfs are not agreeable creatures and if you’re going to get them to do what you want, it’s best to be tactful and make them think it’s their own idea. Wise old Olana knew this, and so, I began to suspect, did my new “friend.”

Then I noticed something that clinched my unease. The friendly spacer had a mild scent that I had previously thought I would recognize anywhere. It was a fresh, soothing blend of cinnamon, rain, and something floral that I had never found an exact counterpart for. Zeltron pheromones – or at least close to how Rhajani’s had always smelled to me. We’d discovered that no two of our friends seemed to pick up the same scent, if they even noticed the pheromones at all. Most people don’t, they just happen to find that they feel better around and tend to agree with any Zeltrons they happen to know. Usually, this is pretty harmless. The worst most Zeltrons are likely to inflict on the unwary leads to things like buying a genuine nuna feather lampshade with the warranty because the lovely salesperson was just so nice.

Still, it’s also true that not all members of the species are benign. Also, the spacer looked more like a human than anything, which might mean he was a hybrid. Zeltron-human hybrids are fairly rare (something to do with the compatability of blood types, if I remember correctly.) No two are alike, but I did recall that Rhajani saying that Zeltron hybrids occasionally became dangerous if raised out of contact with other Zeltrons. She claimed it was something about the lack of others who could teach them how to live with their pheromones and empathy. If this man was one of those unfortunates who turned out wrong, then I needed to get out of his personal atmosphere quickly. And if not, there was still something off here and I was still on a schedule. The sooner I went on my way, the better.

Muttering an excuse about how I thought the route I needed to reach my ship might be further back the way I came, I attempted to step aside and get clear of the spacer. He wasn’t having any of it and matched my moves with fluid agility, dropping the pretense of conversation and swiftly closing in on my space. Not good at all. The situation was probably well within the bounds of my ability to defend myself, but my heart pounded anyway. Instinct. It wasn’t a bad thing, or so I’d been told many times. Overconfidence had never done me any good in training, and it could only get in the way now.

I dodged and blocked an attempt to grab at my arm. In the back of my mind, I still remembered that I should not be here. Too much ruckus would get both of us hauled in by spaceport security. At the same time, I couldn’t take too many chances. A scrapper I might be, but Tissana Novaine I was most certainly not! No antigravity stunts for me. That was all right. I’d found the rhythm in the chaos of my adrenaline-fueled body. My opponent seemed confused that I was able to evade him. Every time I managed to twist out of his grip or duck out of range, there was a faint look of surprise on his face. What was his problem? It didn’t matter. Sooner or later – there, my opportunity. His unguarded foot and the momentum of my last kick came together so perfectly I couldn’t have planned it better. The spacer reeled backward, letting out a harsh shriek of pain before clamping down his jaw to muffle the sound.

Go, now. I bolted for the main thoroughfare, skidding around every corner at top speed and weaving through the crowd with breathless apologies. Only after making several loops to ensure Mr. Creepy hadn’t followed me was I able to concentrate on the mission again.

Looking back on the incident days later, it was not so difficult to believe that I had been mistaken in dismissing Mr. Creepy as a standard issue pervert. While he definitely had been trying to drag me off somewhere, maybe I’d been wrong about the reasons why. If his interest in me had to do with something about Isurus rather than the assault that I’d expected he had in mind… Perhaps he would have tried to run off with any of our group that he could find wandering alone.

What he wanted any of us for was what I couldn’t comprehend. The Nebula Command has an extremely low willingness to negotiate with hostage-takers and I would expect the Second Imperium to have much the same approach. There was the possibility that he thought I knew something that would be useful to him. As if. I never know what’s going on here. It could also be that he was just trying to hinder whatever the Draigon’s passengers were trying to accomplish and wanted to take out as many of us as possible.

Bramer and Zelenus had been separate from the rest of us for a while as well, so why not track them down as well? I wasn’t sure exactly how much their tasks had overlapped, since Bramer claimed primary responsibility for the mishap with the computer systems. Maybe they had been together most of the time and benefited from safety in numbers, or Mr. Creepy had picked up on my cluelessness and selected me as the easiest target, or I had just been the lucky winner who was spotted first.

Too many unanswerable questions, as always. I sighed in aggravation. The droid on my shoulder chirped a testy remark about my processing speed, rearing up on its back legs. At least the little so-and-so was becoming easier to understand as it reintegrated its use of Binary. Simpler to cope with attitude than gibberish.

I had to agree with the message the droid kept repeating most often among the rest of its insults: out, out, urgent, out. The more I learned, the more I felt like Isurus and the rest of the Draigon’s passengers were in serious trouble and the less I wanted to sit around trapped in this shuttle where I was completely blind to the outside world. All of the good reasons for staying put still existed, but they seemed less urgent than they had earlier.

The truth is I was upset and that determined my choices more than anything. That I had totally missed the significance of my attempted kidnapper on Dachat gnawed at my sense of responsibility. Even in my paperwork based on the security recordings, I had barely mentioned my meeting with Mr. Creepy and downplayed it as much as I could. Tired and longing to finish the report so I could go to bed, I had told myself it wasn’t important. In reality, I had still been somewhat shaken by the fight and worried about how I would be evaluated. Other possibilities for what I could have done kept playing out in my mind. If I had chosen a different way to excuse myself for lurking around the edges of the spaceport instead of pretending to be lost, maybe there wouldn’t have been any problem. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I’ve always been able to drive myself more than halfway over the edge with maybes.

Hence the desperate need to break out of the Draigon and go after my shipmates. Totally reasonable. Hindsight has the highest resolution of all, as Mum always said.



Notes:

Binary is the language of whistles, beeps, and other noises that droids use even if they aren’t programmed for Basic.

Tissana Novaine is a character from a popular holodrama series produced in the Nebula systems. She performs a lot of silly and impossible feats through the power of special effects.

 

Great update!

I love the little droid, and Mr. Creepy the half-Zeltron is a really interesting villain. I'm looking forward to finding out what his deal is!

Lots of great lines in there, a couple of my favorites were:

Growing up surrounded by Imperials and felines of various stripes has its benefits when it comes to the skill of bluffing.

“Within a few months you’d be reduced to hunting mynocks and fellow travelers with a sharpened souvenir umbrella, anyway. Unless the mystery meat in Bolooga’s Bantha Burgers really is vervikk after all. Then I suppose you all might live off the local rodent colony for years.”

And I love the detail about Olana.

More, please!

 

I started to chuckle here...

I like this because it shows people actually like living under the Empire's rule.

Sheltie, hahaha, I don't know why this makes me laugh.

I am laughing hysterically at this point. Literally I am laughing out loud at several parts of this post.

 

Okay, I am all the way caught up.

I must say, the way the story started, I wasn't exactly expecting adventure. Which would have been just fine. But you've been able to weave it from an interesting diary style entry story with humor, into a mystery with adventure.

Can't wait to see the next post.

 

Tarsier:

Thanks, I've been enjoying letting that droid devil Lydia. As for Mr. Creepy, like most people he wouldn't really describe himself as a villain. He had reasons for showing up when he did, though not many of them will be clear very soon.

Given enough room and the time and resources to train it, who wouldn't want a tusk cat? Well, probably plenty of people. I see them as having a bit of a sheepdog personality. They will make you be organized or else you will be going nowhere because an 800+ pound feline is sitting on you very calmly and politely. There may be more about that at some point.

By the way, does the font size 3 read okay for you? I know you said there was a size that was too small, but it was a while ago and I can't remember where things were set.

darksideyesplease:

It seems to me that the evil Sithly side of the Empire was something that not every world or species experienced. In one of the novels, they had an alien TIE pilot who was an Imperial (Plat Mallar, a Grannan like some of Lydia's friends and neighbors.) And in the Rebellion era you see several stories where some character shifts from seeing the Empire as a totally legitimate government that was just keeping the peace to realizing how bad it was through some terrible experience.

To me, it's more interesting to have a sense of variation. Some Imperial factions are just plain awful, others are pretty respectable, and many are some combination of the two. At some point, you have to have a relatively functional society if you're going to get to the Empire shown in the Legacy era (assuming you follow canon that far into the future.)

Thanks, I'm glad you found it interesting. It's probably most inspired by that genre of fantasy/sci fi where you have worldbuilding and character development followed by crazy adventures, wash, rinse, repeat.

 

Long post this time, so replies are in the post above.



(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 4)



With my nerf-brained conviction that I must ride to the rescue immediately and with the aid of an excessive amount of caff from the ship’s machine (someone with an interesting sense of priorities had the foresight to install a backup power cell for this most vital of appliances, though not for the ‘fridge unit), it wasn’t long before I had a plan. I have been told that it was not a particularly good plan. I can’t argue with that, and not just because the people who said so outrank me by millions of light years. Leaving the shuttle in and of itself was not such a terrible choice; nobody has tried to say that. The situation was extremely unusual. However, the means that I chose to break out were not the best, as everyone else involved in fixing the damage has informed me.

Fear and oodles of caffeine do not make for good judgment. They do make for fantastic-looking diagrams. Prickly the Delinquent Droid seemed to approve of my new devotion to escape plotting and helpfully provided my ancient datapad with information on the Draigon’s various systems when I asked. It even stopped nipping at my heels (did I mention that it had no manners, none whatsoever?) and trying to drive me out of my room towards the exit door once it realized what I was trying to do.

With the droid’s help, I plotted out the wiring of the Draigon’s cargo bay in neatly color-coded holographic diagrams and tried to find a weak point to exploit. If the door were merely locked and fried, it would be relatively easy to feed power from any of the independently running machines into the mechanism. Unfortunately, the goop coating would still hold everything in place even if the door were functioning. At least the visuals that the droid and I constructed helped me to remember the locations of things. Being able to see what you’re dealing with in a 3-dimensional chart gives one a sense of confidence. Now that I knew where the vital connections were, surely there must be something I could do.

A functional lightsaber would have been perfect for breaking out, but none of those left onboard were anything of the sort. All of the practice weapons had been sensibly chosen with the intention of not accidentally damaging the shuttle’s spaceworthiness. The vibro-ax held some promise at first, but I was quickly reminded that the dratted thing had been specially designed for our safety; every time it got within inches of the outer wall, the power shorted out. Tiny chips of sealant dust flew from the door at each strike and soon made it difficult to breathe. After several minutes I was wheezing and the sealant had a dent only a fraction of a centimeter deep. Dedication wasn’t going to be enough.

I sat down cross-legged and gazed up at the door, coughing occasionally and breathing through the sleeve of my shirt. Okay, so hotwiring or cutting my way out wasn’t going to work that easily. What else? Checking the materials in the maintenance closet might yield something useful and it gave me a reason to get up and move instead of just sitting around. The insect-like droid accompanied me, sticking close to my heels and sometimes running over my feet with its prickly little toes as I moved through the darkness.

There was a respectable collection of tools hidden away in the closet, including everything I would need to repair the hyperdrive, the computer systems, the life support, or almost anything else on the ship. There were even spare parts for the bacta tanks. I found all sorts of cutting tools, things that would work fine on plasteel and not so well on four feet of burn-resistant sealant. Power packs could be retrofitted as explosives if needed, but there was nothing effective that I could use without some risk of singeing my skeleton. However, there was one item that caught my eye, a small canister covered in Aurebesh warnings and danger symbols. Xenoboric acid, of course! Many ships’ crews keep a small, carefully contained supply of the stuff for disposing of tough parasites like mynocks. It’s also sometimes used by pirates to melt through blast doors and other defenses when boarding. The reverse situation, using the acid to break down the sealant and escape, seemed like it might work as well.

My droid shadow warbled a poem in Binary about the inadvisability of caffeine-addled organics handling dangerous materials. I shushed it and gathered up the acid container, neutralizer spray, and a breath mask in case the substance came out in a cloud (not something it was known for, but I didn’t want to be the freak accident that made the textbooks.) If I managed this carefully, it should cause only minor damage.

Live and learn.

As it turns out, xenoboric acid does a phenomenal job of dissolving even the toughest sealant. It also will keep on dissolving everything in its path as it follows gravity downwards. Although I had the neutralizing spray in hand, the destruction occurred so quickly that I was unable to prevent all of it. There was not only a hole in the shuttle’s floor; there was a hole in the ground. Barrett was going to kill me. Some of the acid got on the zhaboka that I used in place of risking my actual hands to poke the door open. It instantly became a former zhaboka, the tip disintegrating so quickly that I ended up flinging it outside into the great beyond. Lesedi was also going to kill me.

The minute the outside air came in, I felt as though I had been tossed in an ice cold freezer. There was barely a whisper of a breeze, but the temperature was so cool that without the breath mask it stung every time I inhaled and my face began to feel chilled. I opened the pack that I had prepared earlier and grabbed the jacket, wrapping it around myself and shivering as I waited a minute for the neutralizer to do its work on the remains of the acid.

Outside, the only sound I could hear was the faint whispering of tree branches. I stepped out into the nighttime landscape and felt pine needles crunch under my feet. Our landing spot seemed to be in a very lonely region. Conifer forest spread out in every direction and nowhere on the horizon could I see the faint glow that would hint at a distant city. Illumination from a single moon and the closely spaced clusters of Deep Core constellations beamed down through gaps between the slender trees. The undergrowth was sparse, making the few areas of brush look suspiciously like creatures in their own right; grasses became the waving tails of stalking felines and thorn bushes resembled great spiky-armored massiff spiders lurking just beyond the edge of the next clearing.

When looking towards the stern of the Draigon, I could see a craggy mountain range towering in the distance. That would have to serve as one of my landmarks, since the handy planetary navigator device I had grabbed from the Draigon’s stores was less useful than it could be. Satellites seemed not to exist on this world according to the device, and apparently even the magnetic poles were funny in some way. The machine refused to calibrate for the usual north, south, east and west. The functions that would normally allow it to determine what world I was on just spat out “access denied” messages, wanted to know what I was doing in a Level 15 Protected Zone, and threatened to sic the authorities on me.

Nice to know. Ysborn, my home system’s grim little ice planet, only rates a 10 and has the distinctions of a horribly toxic atmosphere, lethal cold, and ravenous wildlife that loves both the freezing temperature and the toxins. I hoped there was a difference in the labeling schemes between the Second Imperium and the Nebula Command. If not, something might get us long before the local Imperial security forces had time to even show up. I had my doubts that such security forces existed anywhere nearby.

There was a function that allowed me to take images of the starscape above and create a map and coordinates based on that information. Using that as a basis, I was able to set the location of the Draigon as my starting place. As long as the night sky was visible, I’d be able to use the stars as a guide back to the shuttle. It would be so much easier back home, where each season brought a distinctive view of the Torch Nebula’s fiery veil and every corner of the sky was as familiar as the back of my hand. However, the navigator should do well enough to keep me from getting too lost.

The trail left by those exiting the shuttle began with lightsaber-damaged trees, footprints everywhere, and blaster-burned patches in the forest floor. The area near the ship was full of these marks, but within a few meters the evidence petered out as the combatants’ tracks went off in several directions and became sparser. I soon got the feeling that I was retracing a complete mess. There were at least four places where I got a distinct whiff of whatever energy device had been used in the cargo bay. The only sentient-made debris left were items that I could only describe as rubbish: a crumpled self-heating drink container, some small twist-wires, and some pieces from a cheap music player. These pieces of trash carried the strongest hints of the electrical odor for some reason. I could not make any sense out of it, but pocketed the twist-wires. Evidence of something, anyway, and potentially useful for tying things together.

The droid slunk along beside me, now and then scurrying off on some errand. Each time it left, I wondered if I should have confined it on the ship instead. Its circuits were probably fried in new and interesting ways since its deactivation in the cargo bay. Still, it felt comforting to have something so fierce in my company – even if it was pint-sized. At first the wind in the conifers had reassured me, but now I was beginning to wonder about the absence of other normal forest sounds. Midnight in a forest is supposed to be noisy, with droning insects desperately seeking love, avians squabbling over perches, and other little nocturnal creatures making oversized howls and screams. The recent skirmish near the Draigon could be making the local wildlife shy, but there were other possibilities.

As I was mulling over the possibilities and the chance of such possibilities being armed with sharp teeth or laser weapons, I heard a rustling in the branches high overhead and turned sharply to look at the source. It moved like a skirrit, scampering up tree trunks and leaping from one tall conifer to the next, but I couldn’t get a clear look at the shape.

Needle-sharp points stabbed into the back of my neck and I let out a strangled shriek, striking backwards at the unseen attacker I was sure must be right behind me. There was nothing but empty air standing there when I turned around. I brushed at the painful area. My hand came away with an irate little droid hanging onto it grimly with one pincer.

“You…” I didn’t know whether to be enraged or relieved and had to struggle to hold down the nervous laughter that I wanted to let loose. “What were you thinking? No, never mind. Slow down. You’re babbling again, Prickly.” The droid’s speech was lapsing into the untranslatable Binary slush that it had used on first awakening. The green strobe effect on its outer shell was in full operation, the lights moving faster than my eyes could track. The faster the droid’s vocalizations got, the more the lights increased in brightness and speed. I was certain that the lights were a communication feature. Sadly for both of us, the patterns were no more recognizable to me than the Binary codes Prickly was butchering.

I was a lost cause and the droid knew it. It scampered down to the ground and tugged at the edge of my right sock. I stared in astonishment. Five cups of caff and my one remaining brain cell churned frantically, wondering what this tiny mechanical nincompoop wanted with my footwear. Was it suffering from whatever glitch affected that weird customs droid with the stolen clothing on Dachat? No, wait. Right. I smacked my forehead in annoyance. Prickly wasn’t after my socks, it wanted me to follow it somewhere.

Well, why not? It wasn’t like I had a better idea how to track down the missing people.

I trotted, then jogged, then ran flat out to keep up with the droid as it moved through the trees. Several times it got too far ahead and came racing back, shrieking and offended at my slowness. “There had better not be anything toothy out here”, I told it, “because we’re being heard by creatures dozens of kilometers away. And yes – it is your problem too. Remember that I can’t help you if something has me for dinner.” The droid didn’t like that much from the sulky tone of its soft humming, but it quieted down anyway.

The landscape gradually became more hilly and densely forested as we moved away from the shuttle’s landing site. Within about twenty minutes of starting, I could no longer see more than a couple meters in any direction. Keeping up my pace became more difficult because the ground was strewn with boulders and dense, thorny plants. Prickly had no trouble with such obstacles, moving through the canopy swiftly while I picked my way through the forest as best I could. We were traveling on a downward slope towards a river or stream. Though I could not see the water, I heard it rushing somewhere nearby and felt the air become clammy with humidity. I smelled wet earth, flowers, and… something burning?

Fear sent me scrambling through the brush as quickly as I could without breaking an ankle. Every step became slippery and treacherous as the droid led me down towards the water. There were patches of deep, soft mud hidden in plain sight. I accidentally plunged in up to my knees several times.

It was probably just another charred tree, no casualties. At worst, maybe someone had set off a thermal detonator. Whoever this Mr. Creepy was, I was sure he had nothing to do with Vastag Slone’s happy little clan of sadistic firebug pirates. It was no good. No matter what I told myself, the place where I keep my waking nightmares was all too ready to supply images.

Holding my sensory memories and stomach contents in became a struggle as the odor got worse. Finally, the cause of the smell was revealed as I reached the edge of the thorn bushes that clustered around the stream. Right across the water, a trail of destruction led to the smoking wreck of a repulsorcraft. Chunks of hull and shards of glass were scattered everywhere. It looked like the pilot had plowed right into the boulders of the opposite bank. I winced and steeled myself to see something not very pretty.

Crossing the water involved a lot of mossy rocks, knee scrapes, and falling in the water, but I was already soaked with mud and almost beyond caring. The droid took the easy route, scuttling across the branches above, and was already pacing along a fallen log on the other side when I arrived. To my surprise, there seemed to be no obvious sentient remains among the speeder wreckage. Given the nastiness of the accident, that seemed very unlikely. Before I could examine the debris more closely, Prickly began fussing and lunging at my heels. It seemed uninterested in the speeder and whatever business it had apparently was not going to wait another second.

Prickly’s goal seemed to lie just beyond every single thorn bush on the planet. At times we ended up backtracking and I would have suspected the droid of pure spite if not for its constant flickering lights and sounds of distress. The cries became more plaintive every time we retraced our steps. The tone of its voice worried me. Ever since we left the ship, Prickly seemed to become more frantic with each passing minute. It had me convinced enough that something was horribly wrong that when the droid’s chosen path led to my having to crawl under a seemingly endless thicket of thorn bushes, I went ahead and did it.

By this time I was soaked, freezing, scratched, and so uncomfortable that I almost didn’t notice the pain when something on the forest floor jabbed into my thumb. Thinking it was yet another thorn, I went to brush it away, only to find something far nastier. My first thought was some kind of leech. After the initial moment of shrieking and swift removal, I realized that this was something a little different. The moonlight that filtered through the night-visor gleamed on a pale segment with a serrated edge that lay at the tip of the “leech.” It almost looked like some sort of animal’s tooth. Oh yuuuuck. There was just barely enough room among the thorny branches to turn around and reach my medkit. I fished out the general antivenin and antibiotic shots and applied them, hoping that I hadn’t been exposed to anything too unusual.

The creature was writhing around with a twisting movement. The non-sharp end looked as though it had been severed recently. Served it right, I thought. Nasty. Out curiosity, I risked activating the glowrod to get a better look. Okay, that was not an improvement. Gray and slimy with a red trail of blood leaking from the injured part and something on the razor end that looked like – black fabric? If it was, then I needed to take a better look at it, somewhere where I didn’t have to crouch under a thorn bush. Carefully and while trying not to touch the creature, I managed to trap it in my small toolkit. That couldn’t be good for the tools, but there was nothing better at hand. No way was I putting it in the medkit or with the food supplies.

Prickly watched all of this with unusual patience, though the light show continued to run over its carapace. When I was done collecting the evidence, we moved on.

The undergrowth thinned back to the point that I could walk upright most of the time. The droid and I were surrounded by what looked like an impenetrable wall of thorns on all sides. The thought of having to find my way out again made me wince. The break in the thorny fortress seemed to be centered around a thicket of especially tall and ancient conifers. Inside the grove, the soft glow of the stars and moon was blotted out by the trees above. I stepped more softly, feeling as though I had intruded on one of the secret homes of the talking trees from one of Mum’s Galtean fairy tales. Some of those stories didn’t end so well for the ignorant humans who walked where they should not.

Something whined a few meters away and I flinched, feeling my shaky nerves return at full throttle. The droid hurried on ahead, steering straight towards the sound. More sounds carried through the grove as we approached, labored breathing and eerie cries with a quality that went straight to my spinal cord. I moved slowly, holding my blaster at the ready and trying to present as small a target as possible.

Rounding one of the massive tree trunks, I pushed aside a web of moss to see a tall man lying on his side in the hollow of another conifer’s outstretched roots. His leg was bent at an unnatural angle and his face was deeply scored with claw marks. It looked like his nose had been broken and was bleeding freely as well. Prickly rushed forward and leapt onto the man’s shoulder, whistling away at top speed. The small droid reached forward smoothly with one forelimb and before I could react, a needle extended from the leg and jabbed into the man’s neck. He barely twitched.

The man muttered a word in some unfamiliar language. “’ve got enough nutrients an’ pain meds for a bantha. An entire herd o’ banthas. Stop.” His shaking hand rose up just far enough to trace the line of the droid’s head and back soothingly. The droid hummed pitifully and turned to me. The tone of its voice needed no interpretation. Help my person, was the loud and clear message.

I called out quietly, “Captain Barrett,” and ran towards him, igniting the glowrod. He looked terrible. I hoped that these were recent injuries and that he hadn’t been lying there for the last however-many hours alone.

His name drew no reply. I’m not sure if he really heard it at all.

At four feet away from Barrett, my foot crunched a pinecone and the switch was tripped. My weak and injured shipmate lunged off of the forest floor. His lips drew back in a feral snarl and he let out a sharp, stuttering hiss that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before or ever wanted to hear again. There are things that your gut knows are the last thing you will ever hear and this was one of them. I was barely aware that the droid had dropped to the ground at his side. There were other issues at the moment.

My eyes were seeing it, but my mind could not process it. I had numbly dropped my blaster. Letting go of my weapon was something I had been drilled for years never to do, something that I had not done even in the first real blaster fight of my life. Now I could only lurch backwards for the cover of the trees, all grace and training forgotten.

Everyone has something. Rhajani always gets jumpy when she sees barn uills after dark because they remind her of her older sister’s stories about the Zeltron bogeyman called Lovely Gold. Domitilla once admitted that when she was little she used to sleep under the bed on stormy nights because the creaking of the windows sounded like Lord Nyax trying to pry his way in with spectral fingernails. The Meurics have enough gruesome family ghosts to fill a small town, all of which are said to follow future generations around and make things very unpleasant if they aren’t given their proper due at each harvest. Vera’s grandparents were killed during the Ahto City Massacre on Manaan and she’s obsessively terrified of all things oceanic. She swears up and down that she once heard Selkath could smell their victims from across the galaxy. As for me, I spent my early years poring over the entire Tulekahju Library’s holographic bestiary of monsters and my mother’s stories added a side helping of Galtean hobgoblins to the mix. Most of those childhood wraiths faded away with time. Still, there was one.

Mum had always made a point of explaining the monsters that frightened me, pointing out the impossibilities of their existence and assigning me research to understand how they had formed from the fears and needs of the cultures that invented them. Galtea was an abandoned colony for nearly a thousand years. The stranded human settlers had to work hard to survive, especially after their technological supplies failed. Singing Lorley, the ghostly dust wraiths that guarded old battlefields, the deadly Huntsman of the Brinelands, Ragged Rykur, and the willow haunts of Parchbone River all existed to while away the cold winter hours and teach Galtean children that the wilderness bordering the settlers’ towns was never to be traveled carelessly. Historical backgrounds and logical reasons could be found for the same sorts of stories anywhere from the Rimworlds to the Core.

Every kid has a never-deleted file of exceptions to the rules. One of the most memorable of mine happened when I came running to my mother in the middle of the night with nightmares of an Anzat scratching at the window. Mum gave me no explanation for why such things could never be. She simply said, “There are no Anzati here. They are very rare,” and sat by my side for the rest of the night. Not long after that, she started me on learning to fight and shoot with a neural stunner. The nightmares faded away as I became more occupied with my lessons. But that did not mean that I forgot, especially on summer evenings when I stayed out a little too long at the Meurics’ and had to return home through the lengthening shadows.

All of which leads up to the fact that having our vaguely kooky shuttle captain come at me with Anzati feeders extended was enough to send me into a tiny bit of a panic.

The glowrod illuminated his features, showing the same deeply lined face that I had seen day in and day out throughout the journey but for a few changes. His eyes were dilated so wide that there was hardly anything but pupil visible. The muscles of his jaw and face were oddly tense and the tentacle-like feeders I had only ever seen in storybooks emerged from his cheeks, thrashing around like angry snakes. One was tipped with a razor’s edge that I recognized immediately. My hunch was confirmed when the other proved to be severed near his cheek. I had to hold back terrified laughter. There was no way I could have expected the “leech” I’d found to come from one of my own traveling companions.

Barrett hadn’t made it more than a single clumsy step towards me before his twisted leg gave out and he collapsed to the ground with a hoarse scream.

I would have bolted even if he hadn’t been projecting “GET AWAY FROM ME!”at top volume. Spacers’ tales said Anzati could hypnotize beings to draw nearer and let them feed without resistance. Apparently that ability let them clear a room as well. My leg muscles were determined to break out of orbit yesterday.

I crashed into the thorn bush wall at the edge of the old trees and turned around. Nobody there. I crouched down, crawling backwards into the cover of the thorns and struggling to hold in a sob. I was a shaking mess. Okay, so I’d seen some bad things in my time. But there were bad things and then was this. This was not okay. Breathe in, exhale, breathe in…

Gradually, I regained my ability to think beyond the endless repetitions of “gonna die here, gonna die here.” Barrett was incapable of hunting me down in his current state. Even from where I was now, I could hear the sounds of pain that the droid and I had followed. Get away! That was not a hunter’s lure. It was fear. I could feel it now, lurching in the pit of my stomach. The mental command was instinctive, a last ditch attempt to protect himself from danger.

From me. In that moment of contact, I had experienced flashes of emotions and images that I was sure were not mine. Burned into my mind was the picture of a blurry shadow firing a blaster straight into my face. His face, I thought with detached shock. The shooter was me. I was certain of it the moment the thought crossed my mind. Barrett expected that of me, thought that it would happen as surely as stars burned and rivers flowed downhill.

Maybe I should want to kill him, I thought. Depending on whose rumors you believe, Anzati may live on nothing but the brains of other sentient beings. Some say they have no conscience, that their entire lives are devoted to seeking their prey. What if he wasn’t even the person who was supposed to be piloting the Draigon? Perhaps the real Inder Barrett was buried in a shallow grave on some distant world, his identity stolen by the being that had devoured his gray matter. I shivered at the mental picture.

The rustling of leaves and the sudden appearance of Prickly failed to surprise me. Somehow I knew that the stubborn droid would not give up yet.

I looked up at Prickly, who hung upside down from a ragged branch and gazed at me with what seemed like a pleading expression. “What do you want me to do?” I asked warily. “He won’t allow me anywhere near. You’ve seen what happens.”

Fix, it chirped helpfully.



Notes:

Xenoboric acid is an extremely destructive form of acid that appears in a couple of Star Wars comic series.

Lord Nyax is a Corellian bogeyman with Sith-like characteristics known for kidnapping children. The older story became combined with the actual activities of Darth Vader and others who captured Force-sensitive children during the Empire.

The Battle of Ahto was the event where Vera’s grandparents were killed. Selkath members of the Order of Shasa (a local Jedi-like group) turned to the Dark Side and massacred tourists during a rebellion against the Empire’s mistreatment. The Selkath are an aquatic species related to the Firaxan sharks of Manaan, which contributes to Vera’s shark phobia and mistrust of water.

Galtea is an obscure agricultural planet in the Kathol Sector.

The Anzati are the Star Wars equivalent of vampires, a long-lived Force-sensitive species that feeds on the “soup” of other sentients. This is usually thought of by Anzati as a mystical substance, though they have to consume the other being’s brain to access it. They have tentacle-like feeders hidden in their cheeks and normally resemble humans so closely that they can pass for them without trouble. As far as I recall, they have never been known to sparkle.

Neural stunners are shock-based weapons, used for an effect akin to the stun setting on a blaster.

 

Well this isn't looking too good for Barrett. I hope the little droid's idea comes to fruition and she's able to 'fix' him because I really like Barrett, even though he's a bit of a gruff kook.

Detailed and well written update as always. More and more layers continue to come about. It's really impossible to guess what is going to happen next or where the story is going in the future.

 

Very exciting, excellent update!

As always, I love the background details, especially all the different references to myths, monsters, and fairy tales. I especially like this line - I stepped more softly, feeling as though I had intruded on one of the secret homes of the talking trees from one of Mum’s Galtean fairy tales. Some of those stories didn’t end so well for the ignorant humans who walked where they should not.


And of course I loved the little droid throughout.

You have the perfect amount of detail describing the forest. Just enough to give a good idea of what it looks like without getting bogged down with description.

I too hope she can "fix" Barrett, though I have no idea how she might be able to do that. Also as darksideyesplease said, I really have no idea what will happen next, but I'm eager to find out!

As far as font size, 3 is good for me. I think the default size is the best, but if you lose that size when cutting and pasting it seems to be impossible to get it back - 3 is a bit small and 4 is quite large.

 

(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 5)



It was not madness but the quality of the thorn bush that I had chosen to hide under that ended up sending me off to Barrett’s rescue. Frankly, that was one of the more unpleasant pieces of plant life I’ve ever encountered. Something in the thorns was making my scratches swell up like little puffy boulders. Having seen myself in the mirror since, I can say that I must have looked terrible – seriously, Night of the Howling Falumpaset Woman terrible. Getting out (how in the blazes had I managed to dig myself in?) took a lot of maneuvering and hacking about with a laser cutter, and by the time I was free I was ready to “fix” anything, because I had beaten that thorn bush. No Anzat with a hangnail was going to stanging well defeat my powers of getting things done.

If there was one thing that I had learned from my two years at the Meurics’ farm, it was that there was no creature too large, too hazardous, or too clever to be ambushed and hauled off to the vet for whatever ailed it. All you needed was heavy tranquilizers, the right restraint gear, and enough people. Military surplus light armor was nice to have too, especially if it was the nerfs that needed tending.

You would think the tusk cats would be the scariest, but usually they were well-behaved. The nerfs, on the other hand… well, the less said, the better. Evil-tempered little sons of murglaks. The poor dim-witted eopies were more of a menace by their clumsiness than anything else. I learned to hand-feed them their antiparasitics within a couple of months. The dwarf nunas were pretty despicable, but nowhere near as bad as the nerfs. At least they were short enough that a sturdy pair of boots could save you from being too badly pulverized. Parlan, the sole Talusian humbaba on the farm, burrowed when ill and was the hardest to catch (not least of all because he had an extraordinarily good memory and rarely fell for the same trick twice.) Even he could eventually be coaxed out of hiding with a bit of cunning.

Anyway, the point was that I had already seen that you could subdue and treat almost any creature with the right approach. Dealing with an injured Anzat couldn’t be that much worse than the time Sweetiepie had to have shots for Greenish Nerf Fever and nearly took my ear off. The doctors fixed my Tiss’shar scars just fine before I left home, but Sweetiepie left her mark forever.

It would be nice, of course, to have actual backup. Maybe even a qualified medical officer who was actually trained for this kind of mess. Still, if veterinary medicine was good enough for me and my neighbors during the invasion, it would have to be good enough for Barrett as well.

The main problems that I was facing were simple enough to identify:

Firepower. I had dropped my blaster and left it in the clearing. In a merciful universe, Barrett would be too out of it to notice the weapon, but I couldn’t count on that. Stars only knew what kind of additional dangerous items he might have on hand. From what I understood, he was originally an independent contractor who had been given access to an Imperial shuttle in return for allegiance and providing transport without questions. This made me wonder if he wasn’t necessarily devoted to the letter of Imperial law and might be carrying any illegal weapons he pleased. It seemed pretty likely, especially on account of his species. Most beings aren’t too happy about the prospect of their brainmeats ending up on the menu. If I were him, I’d be armed to the teeth. Probisces. Whatever.

Transportation. Not only did I not have the medical equipment needed to treat severe problems, but I also was sure that this was no place to be hanging around. There was a definite possibility that Mr. Creepy or other hostiles could be lurking in the shadows. Any local carnivores had to be smelling the hovercraft accident as well as the injuries Barrett had sustained. Based on the crash site, I guessed that the ruined craft was not Barrett’s (unless he’d made an awfully quick exit) and he might have his own vehicle stashed somewhere nearby. There had to have been some kind of way for him to catch up to whatever he’d been fighting. Questioning the little droid revealed that there was a second engine signature, though Prickly didn’t seem sure of whether the vehicle was operational.

The “patient.” Sweet bacta allergies, the patient. Exhausted, in obvious pain, and functioning on a purely instinctive level where he might well kill both of us while trying to escape from a rescue attempt. From the twisted look of his upper leg, I suspected his femur was broken. Lunging at me couldn’t have done him any favors. I still remembered Kadios Cibran bleeding out from a broken femur at the temporary field hospital on Shullia. That had been a much worse-looking, open fracture, but it made a grim reminder nonetheless. Old mythology texts I had seen claimed that the Anzati had no pulse. I took that with a grain of salt. Barrett definitely had blood and was losing it from the face injuries as well as any internal bleeding in the leg. That did not seem like a healthy thing, human-like circulatory system or no. Based on my past experience of farming accidents and finger reattachment (only one and they fixed it so well you can’t tell the difference anymore), I thought that the severed feeder was probably repairable for a few hours yet – if anyone was willing or able to get close enough. Hands up for volunteers? Lucky me.

Weighing all of these issues, I decided the best to tackle first would be the transportation. If I could find a vehicle, there might be tools that I could use onboard. The best treatment for Barrett would require transport back to the Draigon and earlier would be better. An armed landspeeder or bike would also be useful if any animals or beings showed up. It also crossed my mind that a vehicle, if handled right, could provide some shielding from any further surprise attacks. Barrett wasn’t in any shape to pull off a full ambush, but he was still a large, dangerous sentient. He might be extraordinarily strong as well, if the old stories were right.

Prickly was able to lead me to the vehicle within a few minutes. The path involved more introductions to the local who’s who of spiny plants, but that was inevitable. I found the vehicle by walking into it, since it had been disguised with a rudimentary holographic camouflage unit. The illusion would not hold up so well in daylight, but my night visor was not up to the task. The droid seemed to have no trouble seeing through the image and easily found and deactivated the hologram emitter when asked.

The vehicle appeared to be a souped-up version of a 74-Z speeder bike. I was relieved to see that it had suffered very little damage. There was even a substantial amount of gear included in a side compartment. Some of it was not familiar, but I was gleeful at finding an operational electroshock net and the protective armwear to handle it. As long as I didn’t somehow flub the aiming, that should be able to keep Barrett restrained for a few minutes. I dug further into the stores and found something that looked like the staticky tape that we had used to keep Isurus still during transport. Perfect. Well, nearly. If the electroshock net functioned as it should, I might be able to get Barrett taped up and tied onto the bike. I would not trust my ability to set his broken leg, but given there was no one better, I would have to at least try to immobilize it for the trip.

That might be a pretty big “if”, depending on how subject his species was to electricity – for all I knew, it might put too much strain on him in his weakened state and cause him to have a heart attack or something. It might have no effect but to tick him off. However, it seemed like my best chance. From the way he had been acting and the thoughts he had projected, I didn’t think he was going to just listen to reason. Therefore, I would have to go with Irate Nerf Protocols (stay back and knock them out first if you can, because otherwise they will find a way to get you.) Speaking of which, it would be a good idea to have some armor, or the second best thing. The breath mask from my pack went back on and I added some adhesive glue-like material that I found in the speeder. Not comfortable, but it would come off with the right solvent where drained brains were not so easy to fix.

Moving the speeder back to Barrett’s location took more time than finding it in the first place, since I had to clear the path when the machine could neither go between the plants nor push through by force. Fortunately, the speeder could hover high enough that I was able to drive over many of the thorn bushes. The exceptions made grueling work. To my surprise, the droid was actually a lot of help there, having been equipped with blade-like extensions on its middle set of legs – a feature that surprised me when it brought them out with a soft click and began slicing away at a branch. It was somewhat unnerving to remember that I had been quarreling with the little dinko all this time.

The old conifer grove was eerily still as I steered the speeder bike around the tree trunks. I couldn’t pick out any sound over the speeder’s soft humming. Hanging moss kept getting in my face and hair, which made it hard to see at times. When I thought the Anzat’s hiding place was close, I slowed down further. The engine of the machine had been modified to soften the noise, but it was still loud enough to hear from a close distance.

Barrett was still exactly where I had left him, sprawled on the forest floor. He had pretty obviously fallen face first and didn’t have the energy to pick himself up. On the off chance that he was playing letharghu and saving his energy for another strike, I decided not to dismount from the speeder. Instead, I maneuvered the vehicle so that I could make a pass overhead and drop the electroshock net from above. It was tricky work to drive the speeder and deploy the net at the same time. Fortunately, I did not run into a tree (see that, License Testing Officer Suraval!) and the net activated as planned.

“The hells, Sheltie?” I heard Barrett grumble faintly under the sparking net. He flopped over on his side with a yowl of misery and turned to glare balefully at me.

I hopped down to the ground and was relieved to see my blaster lying at the edge of the grove. I nabbed it and stuffed it in the speeder’s compartment. It would have been nice to have the weapon if this were a task where I could keep my hands clear, but the last thing I wanted was to have to worry about a panicked Anzat trying to grapple for it while I was busy with the tape. To provide more light, I hung my glowrod from a nearby branch and turned the luminescence on high. I approached Barrett cautiously, trying to not startle him and to keep myself out of range until the last minute. This was not going to be fun.

Barrett’s “Get away” wasn’t as strong as the last time. It only froze me for a second before I plowed forward and darted the last few steps. Getting the Anzat’s arms pinned and taped together behind his back was a grim struggle. I mostly “won” because he was confined by the net and the remaining shock charge helped to stun his arms when I pressed the net against them. Though I tried to go for the pressure points that I had learned to use on humans, it was hard to tell if they worked or if it was just the static and exhaustion that wore him down. Either way, eventually I managed to get the arms taped.

My unlucky “patient” was highly uncooperative in all of this. He almost made the Meurics’ nerfs look civilized, trying to jab me in the neck with his elbows, slicing feebly at my arms with his remaining feeder tip, and cursing several thousand generations of my ancestors in detail and with remarkably little repetition. I had to wonder if Grand Inquisitor Tremayne knew what Barrett thought of his Nemoidian swamp gundark hatched by a blind dianoga – excuse me, I meant his mother.

However, Barrett seemed to be acclimating to my presence, even if he wasn’t happy about being manhandled in the name of first aid. The random, shadowy images and thoughts that flickered at the edges of my mind were no longer about fears of being shot dead and mostly centered on annoyance and pain.

Until I could move him back to the ship and find our crewmates, synthflesh spray-patching was the most I could manage for the deep scratches and feeder injury. I wasn’t sure if that was something that would cause permanent damage or not. It’s not as though Anzati appeared in the first aid manuals back home.

When I brought the materials for a makeshift splint from the speeder, Barrett eyed me with resigned dismay.

He croaked, “Girl, you know that’s actually a force pike, right?” I nodded. Sighing, he rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you know how to set that on safety before you go attachin’ it to my leg.”

I smiled sweetly. “I’m sure I can remember as long as you hold still and stop trying to mangle me.”

“Not the one who’s mangling here, Shelnay.” He looked at me with an unnerving level of focus. “Swear by all the Silent Voices, ‘f I die here from this nonsense, yer gonna be haunted. An’ I don’t mean by the overwhelming guilt of my terrible demise. Mean there’re less kindly things than an old snot vampire out there. Many of ‘em gone, but then there’s some few. Ones that still... well, anyhow. If ya can’t do anything but make this worse, then just go.”

“Alright,” I said. What else was there to say?

My jacket had to be sacrificed to make the wrapping, since there was nothing else to use but the tape. It hardly made me feel more cold, since my clothes were already soaked through and freezing. Barrett didn’t resume struggling when I clipped away part of the net. He just snarled in that dry, rasping way that had terrified me before as I taped the pike and cloth to his leg. Still disturbing, but I knew what I was dealing with (sort of) and what to do. Splints were in my training, at least. With surprising politeness – or weariness – the Anzat did not try to kick me with his uninjured leg. He gradually quieted down by the time I finished the splint. I thought maybe he had decided to trust me. Then I noticed that he had passed out.

To make loading easier, I brought the speeder bike over and turned off the repulsorlifts so that it sat on the ground. Then I faced the awkward task of moving Barrett. Unfortunately, he was a large and unwieldy burden. Trying not to jar and further damage his leg made things more difficult. The droid watched all of this with no comment but an occasional nervous-looking twitch. I had just managed to get Barrett draped over the speeder and fastened down, and was working on finding a way to keep his head and neck safe during transport, when I heard Prickly shriek a danger alert. Though I looked up to scan the area, it was already too late. I felt cold metal press against the side of my head.

Chanchró suchetsui. I silently used the worst of the Galtean swears that Mum accidentally taught me. I knew what that feeling was, even before my captor efficiently punched me in the solar plexus. While I was stunned by the blow, they pulled me down to the ground and set about taping my wrists together behind my back – much the same way that I had done to restrain Barrett only a short while ago. Whoever it was had long fingers, rough, leathery skin, and an iron grip.

She said, “Where is he?” I didn’t know what she meant. She wasn’t happy with that and came around to look me in the face, jamming the blaster against my skull more harshly than before. My heart was galloping. Even in the chill, I could feel sweat beginning to form on my neck. Just seeing the look on her face told me I was in deadly trouble, if the rest were not enough. Hers was not an expression that accepted the existence of obstacles.

Now that I could see her, I knew a little more about my assailant. She was a Weequay female who looked like she had been carved from an especially resolute limestone cliff. Probably young for her species, since the deep patchwork wrinkles of her face had not yet formed the extensive cross-hatching of middle age. The stubby horns protruding from each of her cheeks had not been sharpened, unlike those of the Weequays who joined Slone’s pirates. Her head was shaved bald in the usual fashion for females, but she had grown a single braid that fell a little past shoulder length. It wasn’t formed in the topknot style used by males away from Sriluur and I was unsure what it symbolized, if anything at all.

She wore a slightly fraying weatherproof jacket and durable trousers in similar condition. Her boots were not new, but looked like they had originally been on the expensive side of practical wear – Rhajani’s family sold something similar to participants at the yearly rodeo in Tulekahju. They were meant to take almost any abuse that angry creatures or the elements could dish out. The weapon that she was currently holding against my head was a DL-44 heavy blaster pistol. It could be over two decades old, but the sheen that overlay its scarred and pitted finish told me that it was cared for with religious dedication. I had no doubts about its working condition.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked, trying to keep my tone calm and even. The breath mask over my lower face made my own voice sound strange to my ears, though the respiration was barely louder than normal.

The Weequay didn’t want to be calmed. She reached out with her free arm and shook me by the shoulder until my teeth rattled, then grabbed the side of my face (I was going to have one heck of a bruise tomorrow; I could feel it) and yanked my head up to her eye level.

“Don’t. I am not patient today. This is no time to play games with a baby Imp vornskr.” She wrapped her fingers around my throat and squeezed, just hard enough to let me know what damage she could do. Plenty. Worse yet, I began to feel the static buzz that I had picked up during my encounter with Ombyrne. Another Force-user. Spectacular. What, exactly, had my neck done to offend the spoon-bending collective mind recently?

I gurgled unhappily. The Weequay released my throat and stared me down with a look of pure contempt. She said, “Fine. Let me spell it out for you. You had Arik on your ship. Inahki and I took him away. Your Imps chased us, so we split up. Now Inahki is missing. I can feel him nearby. You,” – and she poked my neck for emphasis – “need to tell me where he is. Is that too complicated for little vornskrs? Should I draw pictures?” Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted to know what medium she had in mind.

Alright, so she and Mr. Creepy (Inahki?) had taken someone named Arik – that must be Isurus – from the ship. She wanted me to lead her to Mr. Creepy? I had no clue where he had gone, even if I wanted to help a kidnapping ring that specialized in mostly-dead amputees. Where was Isurus/Arik/what’s-his-name, anyway?

Rustling from the direction of the speeder bike made us both turn to look. There was an instant that I might have been able to take advantage of the Weequay’s distraction, but it seemed to occur to her in the same moment. Instead, I got a resounding clout on the head that made my ears ring and her elbow hooked under my throat in a tight grip as she aimed her blaster at Barrett.

Most of my energy was spent on trying to get a lungful of air. I could feel the pulse racing under her skin, even though her breathing was deliberate and even. I was pretty sure that Barrett and I were both going to die. This woman was agitated, dangerous, and trigger-happy. Even if I knew what she wanted me to tell her (and I didn’t), there was no way that she could be allowed to just walk off with a criminal who had attacked Imperial personnel and helped kidnap one of my shipmates. Still, if I could come up with a convincing lie, get her to leave Barrett behind unharmed, and use what I had seen of the landscape to lead her into a trap… I was trying to come up with a plan, when Barrett saved me the trouble (or made more, depending on your point of view.)

He said, “Crash.” The Weequay jerked backward like she had been hit, then stilled. Her eyes flickered back to my face and caught the look of alarm I tried to quash. That smoldering wreck was bad news, if she was set on finding someone who had been in it. No bodies, but then I hadn’t had time to search very long, either.

She looked back and forth between Barrett and I, the muscles in her jaw clenching in a way that made me extremely nervous.

Decision made, she firmly held me back with her left hand and shot at the speeder bike twice with lightning speed. I made an instinctive attempt to rush forward and got clonked upside the head again for my trouble. I blinked up at the sight of fizzling electronics and wondered distantly why there was no blood. It took me a short time to realize she had only shot the control panel and steering mechanisms of the bike. Barrett was apparently of no further interest.

I, on the other hand, was evidently the winner of the annual Tromp through the Dark Thorny Forest at Gunpoint raffle. My captor was definitely in a hurry, so much so that she would occasionally just hang me over a handy fork in the nearest tree while hacking out a path through the underbrush. This was not comfortable or dignified from my point of view – especially when my point of view was upside down. I learned that she carried a rather sharp machete-like tool as well as the blaster. Only one side of the blade held an edge, but that edge looked severely wicked.

We made our way down into the muddy, miserable riverside area where she had concealed her vehicle. It was a hodge-podge creation with about three quarters of some unidentifiable landspeeder’s large body welded onto the wings and powerful engine of a Peregrine-240 swoop. There seemed to be an extra engine in there, too. It was about the least appealing Ugly craft that I had ever seen and I fully expected it to explode spectacularly upon starting. Distressingly, the Weequay did not seem inclined to let me sink into the mud and stay behind.





Notes:

Lydia is fond of cheesy horror films, including The Night of the Howling Falumpaset Woman.

Dwarf nunas are a smaller breed of the regular that originally came from Naboo. They are mentioned in the article on nunas. (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nuna)

The humbaba is a large domesticated herbivore found on Corellia, Talus, and Kashoon. Wookieepedia says they burrow in swamp lands. Given the apparent size of the animals, that has to make a tremendous mess.

The 74-Z speeder bike is the type used by the Imperial scouts on Endor in ROTJ. It’s an older model but a popular one, and the Remnant has to continue using a lot of antique machines by this point.

The letharghu is a creature from Shullia that “plays possum” when threatened, though it is a feathered reptile rather than a marsupial.

The beliefs of the Anzati give special significance to the Silent Voices, glowing strands of atmospheric gases that can be seen in the night sky of the species’ homeworld. These lights are seen as the life forces of their ancestors.

“Chanchró suchetsui” refers to the fairly gross defense mechanism of a marsh creature from Galtea. The chanchró (real world origin is from kankro, an Esperanto word that means “crayfish” and ultimately comes from Latin for “crab”) can spout globs of blood mixed with an acidic compound. Suchetsui is the acid/blood ickiness that they produce (real world origin is from shukketsu, which Wiktionary has as the transcription for the Japanese word for “bleeding.”)

Uglies are normally starfighters, but I imagine the term could also be applied to any vehicle that was created from a mishmash of different models.

 

Ooh, new twists! Very nice.

Love the references to catching animals on the farm, especially Sweetiepie.

Glad things are looking a little better for Barrett (if not for Lydia!).

More, please!

 

(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 6)



By some miracle, I was able to make it through getting into the swoop-ish monstrosity without getting hit over the head again. The Weequay checked my bound hands. She then lifted me up and more or less tossed me into the back area of the speeder, which had the seats removed to make room for cargo. Except that in this case, the cargo was myself and Isurus. Arik. Somebody. Well, now I knew where he was, for all the good that did me.

Oddly enough, he looked less wraith-like than he had before. When the driver turned around to examine us with a glowrod, he actually moved his head and tracked the light with his eyes. He had not been that alert on Dachat. There was a reality to his presence that contrasted against what I had seen when treating him. This time he was not well at all, but did not have that aura of someone slipping away. He was miserable, but miserable here. Being in the bacta for a few days must have helped. There was little visible bleeding through the bandages that someone had replaced after taking him out of the tank (the Weequay? Hard to imagine, but so was Mr. Creepy.)

A strange dark-colored stain at the base of his hair made me think he had a new head injury from Ms. Duracrete. Then I noticed that it was constant across the roots of his hair and that the liquid dripping down from the “injury” appeared blue-green. Poor lighting and the hue's distortion when seen through my night-visor might have had something to do with that, but it still seemed unusual. In fact, it looked like the time that I had helped Domitilla wash out the results of a really bad attempted dye job. We used another chemical that we thought would counteract the original dye, but it ended up interacting and making it worse. This meant more washing and more unnatural colors.

As the hovercraft’s engine started (a process which involved a lot of questionable coughing sounds and creaking metal), the badly-dyed stranger stared at me with curiosity. He poked at my night-visor and breath mask like he didn’t recognize the objects at all, then brushed one of the thorn scratches near my left eye. My sudden retreat seemed to startle him.

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” he said. “Looked like you were an Ubese or something, but they don’t leave their hair uncovered. Thought I was having a hallucination.” There was a slur in his voice that, combined with the lack of coordination in his arm movements, made me think he was on heavy painkillers.

He asked, “Were you that – the other girl that was there when they brought me in? Kind of blondish and short, and Ombyrne didn’t like her. I mean, he doesn’t like anyone much, but that’s not important.”

“Blondish and short, yes.” At least it wasn’t “blondish and furry”, as it was for a few weeks after Chelii’s youngest brother discovered the wonders of adding Bimmisaarian hair growth potion to everyone’s shampoo.

The engine made a disturbing noise as the Weequay made a hairpin turn to avoid a conifer. Both of us in the back groaned and curled into the floor. It didn’t help much, given the constant thumps and bumps generated by the hovercraft’s mismatched structure.

“Fierfek, Dzidra. Could you make this a little worse?” Isurus grumbled.

The driver turned around and I flinched in reflex.

She said, “Excuse me, I’m trying to drive in the dark, in a forest full of ronto-sized trees. Also, there are Sithly vornskrs with lightsabers around here somewhere. Would you like to call back later and leave a message with our smoking corpses?” in a downright unsettling, cheerful saleswoman’s tone of voice.

Isurus cringed and yelled, “Look ahead!”

We barely missed plowing into a boulder, the nerve-wracking event made worse by the fact that Dzidra of the duracrete hands never turned to look ahead. She just swerved the Ugly hovercraft without looking and somehow we avoided the rock. I decided that it was better not to know what was going on outside and braced myself against the side of the compartment with my eyes closed tight.

Someone prodded at my shoulder. I looked up to see Isurus’ worried, turquoise-smeared face leaning over me. “Are you alright there?” Between the constant clattering of the hovercraft and the pounding inside my head, it was difficult to focus enough for eye contact. He called to the driver, “Dzidra, I think the Imp is concussed or something.”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake.” She turned around again with no apparent regard for the scenery whipping past. “This is really not the time or place. I need her to lead us to Inahki, and then I’ll leave her tied to a tree. Carefully, I promise. Let the other Imps take care of her. We are not running a vornskr rehab clinic. And you need to sit down and rest!”

Imps. That put a different spin on things. All this time, I had assumed Isurus-or-Arik was one of our own who had been rescued from a mission gone horribly wrong, and then sneakily kidnapped by the team of Creepy and Duracrete. I suddenly felt extremely foolish. What had anyone ever said to confirm that he was an Imperial? Knowing that he was – actually, I didn’t know what he was, but knowing that he was something other than Imperial made me feel even more trapped and out of my depth. Any number of people in the Galaxy might casually refer to us as “Imps.” Still, it was a disrespectful term and the whole conversation was disturbing. In particular, I wondered if “carefully” to Dzidra meant “upside down.”

Arik looked at me uncertainly. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Maybe the worst part of my new discovery was that I had not expected it at all. Dzidra and Inahki both had the dress and mannerisms of fringers, the kind of people who might make their living as anything from outright pirates to borderline-honest traders or bounty hunters. They projected the kind of streetwise confidence that I expected from that group. I had personal experience of their willingness to attack a semi-innocent bystander. In Arik’s case, my first impression involved him quietly curling up at death’s door and me trying to patch him up while praying he wouldn’t die right then and there. It was not really the kind of meeting that inspired me to think of him as a potential adversary.

He did not appear to be comfortable with my treatment. If he had been tricked into going along with these crooks, or if he had doubts about his involvement with them, there might yet be a way out of this. My shipmates had wanted him kept alive. There must be a way to convince him that he would be better off cooperating with me, even returning to the Draigon – if only I could get us both free from this rattletrap vehicle.

We had traveled for only a few minutes, and I already considered myself hopelessly lost. The distant mountain range only appeared through the trees occasionally and was further away every time. I could not help thinking that I would never find my way back to the ship. Then I remembered the navigation device and was simultaneously relieved and terrified. On one hand, I was not really lost. On the other hand, that was not necessarily a good thing; having that device meant that I did have a way to lead the Weequay to that crash site.

There was nothing I could do about it. No way to jettison the machine with my hands tied, and especially not without drawing attention. I felt like the truth was written on my forehead: I totally know where everything is and you can feel justified in shooting me for it. It seemed likely that no one would ever find me if they did.

Watching the muddy riverbank fly past, I thought about being left there forever. It was almost funny, because when I was younger, one of my favorite things to do was searching for old fossils in the Rafnkell Mountains. Eons ago, those fossils had been created from plants and animals that were preserved in mud. Perhaps many years from now, someone would be picking through the rocks and say, “Hey, is that from a human? Kinda short, wasn’t she?”

The conversation, such as it was, had petered out. Arik had a pained look on his face and I thought that either the painkillers were wearing off or he had overtired himself by moving around and talking.

Although I had initially thought we were headed away from the Draigon’s landing site, it turned out that we had made a loop around and headed back towards it. It was not easy to keep track of our direction. Dzidra often turned the vehicle around and went off down any path that the forest allowed, seemingly at random. Sometimes she would halt the hovercraft and stare off suspiciously in the direction of perfectly blameless trees and rocks, only to wheel around and take us back to somewhere that I knew we had already passed. Our ride finally slammed to a stop in a clearing that I recognized, not far from the path that Prickly and I had followed down towards the river.

The Weequay jumped out and paced a circuit of the clearing, pausing now and then as though she were listening for something. Soon, as if there had been no reason to leave the hovercraft in the first place, she climbed back in and started up the engine. It sputtered resentfully as she took us off on yet another racing path through the woods.

Raising his head, Arik asked, “Can you sense him yet?”

She muttered something under her breath, then said, “A little. Enough to tell if we’re getting closer.” Then she pulled another blaster from the driver’s storage unit and handed it to Arik, saying, “Keep this trained on the vornskr. If she leads us wrong, shoot her.”

Arik took the weapon with dismay, but immediately aimed it at me with a surprisingly steady grip. Not unfamiliar with blasters, then. Stang.

He looked at me as though I might bite. I glared back, trying as best I could to assure him that I would, in fact, gnaw his face off given half a chance.

“Dzidra, we’re not dealing with an Inquisitor,” he said with a hint of rebellion.

I was a bit caught between the possibility of an ally and my steadily decreasing sympathy for Arik. His story was still a mystery, but he was helping to threaten me with a blaster. Even when done reluctantly, that kind of thing does not endear people to me.

Dzidra said, “I know that. That’s why we’re using her as a guide instead of just killing her. By the time these nutbars are done with their Imp training, they have no survival instincts left. This one’s a brainwashed twit, but she’s still afraid of dying.”

Why, thank you Ms. Duracrete.

She brought the hovercraft around a bend in the riverbank and said, “Which way?” The command that I was to become fried critterflakes if I refused to answer was unspoken, but Arik and I both understood.

 

Awesome update!

Good to see Isurus (Arik?) again and feeling better. I like him! Nice twist that he seems to be on the other side, I definitely was not expecting that!

I especially like these lines:
Watching the muddy riverbank fly past, I thought about being left there forever. It was almost funny, because when I was younger, one of my favorite things to do was searching for old fossils in the Rafnkell Mountains. Eons ago, those fossils had been created from plants and animals that were preserved in mud. Perhaps many years from now, someone would be picking through the rocks and say, “Hey, is that from a human? Kinda short, wasn’t she?”

The command that I was to become fried critterflakes if I refused to answer was unspoken, but Arik and I both understood.

 

We're finally approaching the end of this "day" in the journal. Even in a galaxy far, far away, some days are longer than others. I think it will only be one or two more posts, one of which is already in progress.

Tarsier:

Thanks for the comments, as always! They make my day every time.

Neither was Lydia, I think. Glad you like him; he's one of those characters who turned out to be my surprise favorites. It's fun to see how they change and evolve once they appear in actual prose, even after all that outlining beforehand.



(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 7)



“Give me the blaster and help me get out of here”, I whispered to Arik. “Just come back to the ship with me and I’ll tell them how you aided me. They’ll work something out for you.”In all honesty, I doubted there was anything to be done for him. Still, it was just barely possible and I did not think that threats of Imperial retaliation would lead to any change of heart. Best to see if he would cooperate and if so, then perhaps Lesedi or one of the others would be able to get him back into the Second Imperium’s good graces (assuming they were so inclined.) Not my area of expertise, for certain.

He clearly understood my words, but unfortunately wanted none of it. His face set stubbornly and he shook his head.

“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed. “What makes you think I would ever want to go back to there? If you hadn’t noticed, I had a little trouble getting out in the first place!” He glanced at the wrapping on what remained of his right leg.

“Wait, you – “ I choked on my question and could not finish it. Running through everything that had happened, I felt rather like I had just had another swat to the skull from Ms. Duracrete. This was… something that I had no idea how to handle. Skrag it. To my further dismay, I could tell that Arik picked up on my speechless state. Control over the direction of the conversation was out of my hands before it had even started.

“You’re one of the new ones, aren’t you?” he asked with less venom.

Frowning in confusion, I questioned, “What new ones?”

Arik said, “The ones that they’re using for that program next door. You aren’t a trained Force-user; your presence is faint but it’s the wrong kind of faint for someone shielding. I’m surprised they accepted someone who’s nearly Force-blind.”

He knew the term, but did not say it with the condescension that I was used to hearing from Force-users. From the things he said, it sounded more and more like he had somehow been at Karkaryss. And he had been “next door” to some mysterious program. Stranger and stranger.

“It’s not as wonderful of a deal as they make it sound, you know,” he said. “Look… what’s your actual name?”

Falling back on the fake ID, I told him, “Deliya Heringshai.”

“No, it’s not.” He rolled his eyes, but continued without arguing further. “Anyway, whoever you are, it’s going to follow you. Rename yourself, strut around in a swishy drama cape, scare your friends and nervous acquaintances with fits of electricity, do whatever you like. You’ll still be the same old, same old in too many ways that you’d rather forget. Different in ways that are inconvenient, too.”

Arik looked for comprehension in my face and found none. I’m sure it all made sense to him, but then he was injured, possibly influenced by pain meds, and who knew what else? Could he be going into shock again?

I said, “That’s not exactly the plan. As you noted, I’m not Force-user material. No drama cape for me.”

He made a hmmm of disagreement. “Maybe so. You had better hope they believe that. If I were you, I’d be thinking about what I really want to do with my life.”

“And what do you want to do with your life, Arik?” I challenged him. This was going way off the rails into territory I didn’t want to tread. I’m a good student, a skilled amateur techie, and can herd a nerf like nobody’s business. Being special because of some mystical inborn quirk is what defines Isander’s life, just as it does my father’s. It has nothing to do with me. That’s been made clear many times over the years – and really I’d rather it stayed that way.

Hopeful that the gloves I was wearing might slip off and allow me to free my hands, I was trying to slowly slide them off while conversing with Arik. It was not going well. The gloves were made of clingy material and the Weequay’s knot-tying abilities were unfortunately very good.

Arik squinted at me curiously. “Do you know that you almost completely disappeared just now? It’s very disconcerting. Especially since you shouldn’t be able to.”

For a second, I thought he really was hallucinating; then I recognized that he was talking about some sort of Force weirdness again. His question reminded me of Lesedi’s tests. I hoped that I was not as interesting as she seemed to think.

Dzidra called back to us, “Stop talking to her! Just get the directions already. And if you can’t feel her presence, it’s probably because there’s not much there. Not that strange with Imps. Crack open her brain and it’s going to be properly filed forms and big grey battleships and Empire Day parades full of marching mannequins all the way through. Boring people, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. And the hundredth is mynock guano crazy that you really don’t want to see.” She swerved the hovercraft again, taking us through a full barrel roll this time. “I’m not leaving one of my people here because you’re afraid to be harsh with a vornskr. Don’t make me come back there.”

Immediately, Arik said, “No! We’re fine. I’ll take care of it. You can just concentrate on steering – do you see that up ahead? Okay. Phew. That was close.”

He shifted his attention back to me and said, “Sorry about this, ‘Deliya’, but she’s right. It’s my fault they’re even out here.” No posturing with the blaster, but his aim on me remained unshaken. He gave me what was very nearly the most pleading look I had ever seen from a humanoid. Enough to melt a heart of stone, assuming said heart of stone had not been raised by my mother. Tough luck, Arik.

I gave him my most loathing-filled expression, though I found my efforts somewhat hampered by having most of my face covered. This had to be good. Hold that pose, just a little longer. It was not particularly difficult to show fear since I was pretty nervous; the hard part was to make my loss of composure look spontaneous. My lower lip trembled just a little and my shoulders hunched. Arik kept the blaster in place, but was getting the look of someone who had just accidentally stepped on a pittin.

A check of the scenery showed that the mountain range was off to the side. Based on the clearing we had passed through, I had a general idea of where we were relative to the crash site.

Finally, dropping my head down to rest against the side of the hovercraft and closing my eyes, I mumbled, “Off to the right from here.” Total banthawash. Right would lead them into the brambles, where a proper distraction might give me a ghost of a chance of getting away.

Nodding slightly, Arik turned towards the Weequay and yelled, “Left, about 40 degrees. Turn near the rapids.”

Wait. That was actually close to what I thought was correct. How did he – and he shrugged at me and whispered, “You’ve been glancing at those mountains ever since we started. Do you think I’m blind and have no sense of direction?” In the dark, when I was wearing a night-visor, he could see that? I glared at him, angry and embarrassed by my failure. He shook his head. “Hate to do this with you acting like you’ve got a head injury, but you keep trying to get yourself killed…”

For a second I thought he was going for a kill shot, until the blue light of a stunner lanced out. The beam went wide off into the forest and Arik suddenly fell over limp in the corner.

I looked to the driver’s seat with the blaster in my hands. My reflexes had grabbed that for me before I consciously realized Arik was down, or that my hands were now free. Small favors. I had not even felt the binding cord come loose and was unsure exactly how it happened. Up front, Dzidra was cursing and trying to capture something with her left arm while steering with the right. Forgive me if I don’t want to recall what her piloting was like at the time. If I do, I’ll be left staring at the walls and wondering why the afterlife looks like a cramped shuttle room filled with my stuff.

Crouching tensely, I tried to make out what was going on and waited for a chance to get to the driver when we weren’t in danger of smashing into the trees. It seemed that might be never at the rate we were going. The Weequay turned on the lights in an effort to see whatever had invaded the vehicle. I suppose I should have suspected the culprit; it was Prickly again. In all the adrenaline rush of the confrontation with Dzidra, I had lost track of the droid and did not see where it had gone. The sneaky little thing probably hitched a ride by hiding in a dark corner of the hovercraft and I didn’t even notice. If it had been there all along, that explained how the binding on my hands had been cut.

Prickly careened around, dodging the Weequay’s grasp like a very small jakrab in mantid robot’s clothing. The lights on its carapace were all dark, making it much harder to spot. Its attacks were valiant but futile. The sharp blades that had worked on thorny branches soon became dented and twisted from trying to break through the pilot’s tough skin. I had once heard that you could shoot a Weequay point blank with a standard blaster and it wouldn’t do a thing but annoy them. Dzidra seemed to be the living proof.

In the midst of the struggle, the droid damaged some wires near the controls. The whole arrangement there was a mess of different control systems strung together. Prickly’s tampering was evidently a problem, because the panel sparked threateningly and the Weequay slammed on the brakes, cursing. I grabbed Arik to keep him from smacking his head against the wall. That was the last thing he needed at this point. A quick check proved him to be breathing normally and have a steady pulse, at least.

There was a sudden earsplitting shriek so intense that I hunched over and cringed. The droid had been caught and was making its complaints to the management. My night-visor’s light-filtering was the only thing that saved me from being temporarily blinded by the lightning-like flashes that Prickly emitted. Dzidra was at least as affected, curling up with a horrible grimace on her face while refusing to let go of the droid. She swung her hand against the edge of the dashboard and there was a nails-on-chalkboard sound of metal against metal.

The droid’s shrieks went off-key and I could see that it was severely damaged, with half of its body immobile and displaying no lights. With Prickly out of commission, the opportunity to strike would not last much longer. I wished that I had gotten more practice with this kind of scenario back home before everything changed. Given my opponent’s species and the limited space, a blaster was just an encumbrance, so I stowed Arik’s weapon on my belt.

I dragged myself over the barrier to the driver’s side as quickly and gracefully as I could with cold-numbed legs and hands that had been tied securely for a bit too long. Bypassing Dzidra, I went for the heavy blaster at her side, managing to snatch it before she could retaliate. The droid hanging from her arm attempted to jump to me, failed, and fell to the floor. It crawled over to me with remarkable speed and burrowed into my shoe, an arrangement that was much more inconvenient for me than for it.

Though I scrambled to get out, the Weequay managed to catch my left arm on the way and nearly pulled me back into the hovercraft. Wrenching pain ran up and down my arm. I barely managed to twist myself free. Fortunately, I didn’t hit the ground as badly as I could have and was able to roll the landing as I had been drilled so many times. My arm and shoulder protested, but at least there didn’t seem to be any dislocation.

Victory in securing the DL-44 was short-lived. The weapon began to shake and twist in my grip, then tore free with bruising force and floated back to Dzidra’s waiting hands. I ducked and sprinted for cover behind a thorn bush.

The Weequay remained in the hovercraft, much to my surprise. What was she staring at? I tried to get a look while not letting her out of my sight, and only caught the edge of a figure moving through the trees. A large figure. Soft laughter made me turn to Dzidra again, but she appeared as sober as ever. The laugh came again, this time from a different direction. There was a quality about it that almost resembled a sob, and the pitch and duration of sounds was wrong.

Static tingled in my spine and I looked around, half expecting to see one of the Inquisitors step out of the shadows. It would have even been a relief for once.

 

Arik kept the blaster in place, but was getting the look of someone who had just accidentally stepped on a pittin.
Aww, Arik's really a sweetheart, isn't he?

I suppose I should have suspected the culprit; it was Prickly again.
Yay, Prickly to the rescue! I knew I liked that little droid.

I grabbed Arik to keep him from smacking his head against the wall.
I'm glad Lydia's looking out for him.

It crawled over to me with remarkable speed and burrowed into my shoe, an arrangement that was much more inconvenient for me than for it.
At least now she'll know exactly where he is for a while!

Very exciting update! Who's that in the trees? I'm eager to find out!

 

Tarsier:

Aww, Arik's really a sweetheart, isn't he?

He doesn’t know what you’re talking about. He’s a hardened criminal or something. Says so on the warrant for his arrest.

Yay, Prickly to the rescue! I knew I liked that little droid.

Prickly has never cared for being a damsel droid in distress. Never send a meat machine to do a droid’s job.

I'm glad Lydia's looking out for him.

Heh. There will come a time when she’s good and sick of being out looking for Arik. She’ll often wish she had the opportunity to let him get a concussion. Still, she was responsible for saving him before. I think that knowledge of mortality makes him a person to her in a way that most “enemies” wouldn’t be.

At least now she'll know exactly where he is for a while!

Exactly. It may beat having a spider (wait, no, it’s just the droid again) on your shoulder every time you turn around.

Very exciting update! Who's that in the trees? I'm eager to find out!

Thanks. As for what’s in the trees?

Spoiler: SPOILS!

It looks like some new friends. Don’t suppose you have a nice half-cow from the butcher’s on you? They’re starting to make me a little nervous…

A/N: This one ends on another cliffhanger, but we’re getting closer to the resolution of this happy camping trip.



(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 8)

In the washed-out light revealed by the night-visor, it was hard distinguish between ordinary shadows and moving objects. The electric feeling of a Force-user in the vicinity kept flickering on and off like someone was playing with a light switch. I was getting goosebumps for reasons that had less to do with the Force twinges and more to do with the evidence that I was being watched from multiple directions. Faint sounds from twigs snapping and leaf litter rustling made it through the constant stream of grating engine noises from the hovercraft. It felt like something was right behind me all the time. No matter how often I turned around, there was nothing there but moving branches and the edges of shadows. The droid in my shoe was agitated, rustling around and making high-pitched squeaks of alarm.

I would like to say that I heard, saw, or felt something in the instant before I was deftly dragged from cover. Truth hurts. I didn’t even get a glimpse before it hit me.

One minute I was warily scanning the trees behind the downed hovercraft. The next I was trapped. It was the smell that got through to me and made it all real, a stench of rotting meat mixed with an almost citrus-like odor that did nothing to lessen the carnivorous nature of the scent.

After thinking “this can’t get worse” all night, this was where I had wound up. So now I did my best not to think any such thing. Where “worse” was located when one started from being stuck in the jaws of a predator the approximate size of a skyhopper, I really did not want to know.

All of my efforts to squirm out of the creature’s grip were fruitless. Trying to move seemed to make it agitated as well, resulting in the animal clamping down with a firmer bite. My right arm took a glancing blow from one of the sharp fangs, though the rest of me was strangely unharmed. Mostly all I felt was bruising and pressure against the injuries I had already picked up that night. There were strong but blunt teeth in the rear part of the creature’s mouth, and sharp incisors and canines towards the front. It must be some sort of omnivore. How embarrassing. If something was going to have the gall to devour me, it ought to at least be a full-time carnivore.

The droid had gone absolutely still, freezing in place against my ankle as if it needed to hide. Its caution was probably unnecessary; I was sure the sharp-edged little machine would be indigestible.

Blaster fire and sounds of what I hoped were not humanoid screams erupted from the direction of the hovercraft. The shots continued without ceasing, so I could only imagine that Dzidra was victorious so far. Not that that did me any good, being over here in my worst yet upside down perch of the night.

I still couldn’t see the animal very well, though by twisting my head I could just make out that it had huge, spiraling tusks that were dotted with razor-edged branches. It almost looked as though someone had gotten overly creative with carving a nisu stag’s antlers and then twisted the results into a nautilus shape. As much as I tried, I could not work my way around to see far beyond where the creature’s bony plate-armored jaws closed around my shoulders. Inconveniently enough, the blasted thing had managed to trap my arm in a position where I could not reach my stolen blaster.

Sounds filled my head that I could not hear so much as feel, making deep rumblings like the digging machines used to excavate the lower levels for new buildings in the city. The sensation made each and every one of my head pains worse. For the first time since the creature had attacked, I heard those sorrowful giggles again.

They melted out of the forest more silently than anything that size ought to, padding along with an odd swinging gait. The animals’ powerful but stocky hind legs seemed to never quite catch up gracefully to their taller forelimbs. For all their ungainly appearance, they were fast. Within seconds, seven golden-eyed faces pressed up so close to me that I could have reached out and touched them if my hands had been free – and if I had no sentimental attachment to said hands. They whimpered, looking at the one who held me with absolute attention. Another bone-jarring growl, even louder than the others, came from the creature. The group scattered, then returned and formed up in a military-straight line. All sat on their haunches with heads bowed towards the ground in an apologetic posture.

Even in the best of light, these animals weren’t going to win any beauty contests. At first glance, the bony armor plates covering their skulls made them look like stripped carcasses that had somehow gotten up and wandered off before decomposition was complete. Their heads were massive and almost as disproportioned as their bodies, with huge rear jaws slowly tapering into a narrower but still strong-looking bear-like snout at the tip. Jagged bony spikes protruded from their muscular shoulders and followed the trail of their vertebrae.

Each of the creatures kept its long, spike-studded tail neatly wrapped around the rear feet while bowing to what I was beginning to think must be the pack leader. Their tufted ears flicked back and forth, possibly listening for the rumbles that I could barely discern. It seemed like each one waited for some kind of signal before they stopped their display and looked up again.

They were far too interested in me. Sickly golden light glinted from their wide, uill-like eyes without respect to where the moonlight fell; the source of the glow seemed to come from within their irises. The shade was an almost perfect match for Ombyrne’s tinted eyes on Dachat. Every time one of the creatures stared at me I could feel the static, although it seemed to fade out again the minute they turned away.

A soft huff from my new non-buddy apparently gave them permission to express themselves.

“EEEEEEeeeeeee!” one screamed, sounding like a bad imitation of a horror film. Its nearest neighbor reached over and grabbed it by the neck, wrestling it into an uncomfortable stooped position until it quieted.

Another cocked its head to the side and said solemnly, “Where’s the hydrospanner how do you expect me to fix stupid droid going to be late to Symbia at this rate how’s the rusted old piece of crud going to be late hydrospanner.”

“Hi doggie doggie hi doggie hi,” another answered in a child-like singsong tone, turning towards the one with the hydrospanner babble.

One with silvered fur and a broken tusk called out, “Neela, Neela? Where are you, Neela?” in a wavering female voice. It had a dramatic twist to its tail, which appeared to have broken and healed wrong. Scars and damaged spikes were visible all over its body and it also avoided placing full weight on its left front paw, which was warped and deformed by some old injury.

The smaller animal who stood close to that one was less polite, letting out a string of single-word profanities. The broken-tusked creature rumbled and the shorter one dipped its head, briefly taking on the chastised posture again.

I had done pretty well at holding my lunch down through the wild ride on the Ugly speeder. Sadly, the combination of stark terror, a digestive system full of caffeine and little else, aching head injuries, and the smell of the creature’s breath finally got to me. The pack of animals watched me empty my stomach, chattering random-sounding comments to each other all the while.

It wasn’t quite pure nonsense if you listened for patterns. Most of the things they said were repeating phrases, bits and pieces of everyday chatter strung together one after the other. Now and then, something would slip through that was rather disturbing. Shrieker, Hydrospanner, and the Pottymouth were the most common offenders. Their ramblings often verged into something far less innocent. Little phrases like “kill it”, “hellbeasts”, and various desperately-worded pleas and threats were interspersed with the rest of the phrases. Broken Tusk seemed to disapprove of these antics, glaring pointedly at the other creatures whenever they became overly enthusiastic.

This was very bad. Somehow, the creepy things sounded even worse when calmly murmured or sung to a popular tune from ten years ago. Experimentally, I attempted to draw my leg up so that I could grab the droid from my shoe.

Instantly, I was shaken roughly and felt a rush of pure liquid ice inside my head. The sensation reminded me of Ombyrne’s attack, and I even struggled to breathe – though I didn’t know whether that effect was just from memory. My vision started to fade out and for a second, I thought I could almost see something.

“See” might be the wrong word. It was not so much a form as an emotional image. The closest I can come to describing it is that it was a bit like looking up at one of the old Stelae of Tasmor in the historical district on Adrastú. It was a little similar to that feeling, one of something ancient and regal looking down at you while being entirely unimpressed.

Stay still, NOW.

The command felt almost like Barrett’s brain-shoving communications, except that there was a strange flavor of language about it. I could feel myself trying to mouth the words, my vocal chords struggling to repeat this unfamiliar pattern that felt like it was almost there, almost ready to be understood and used. I tried to bring the information together, hoping against hope that there might be a way to communicate with the creature. It was no use. Chunks of form and meaning rattled around like keys on a chain, but I lacked the ability to make sense out of the pieces.

Though I was nearly as helpless to move as I had been to avoid running from the Anzat, I think I was developing some sort of resistance by this point. Maybe it was because of what had happened earlier. I was unsure if I would be able to make large movements, but found that I could subtly tense and relax muscles. The creature seemed not to notice this, so long as I was careful.

There were small chinks in the armoring of the creature’s face. The skin beneath might or might not be sensitive. Time to wait. I had learned some small part of this game from Ahnjai. A fight did not end when he grasped an arm or leg in his jaws. If dodging and sheer cussedness were what we practiced most, this was the third most frequent: the art of knowing when attention and balance shifted, and when to make a bid for freedom. Ahnjai could have just as easily shattered my bones to a pulp with the strength he had (and some years, it must have been difficult not to.) It now seems strange to me that I never really thought of him as a gentle being.

The pack of creatures began to stir more often, though to my relief the interest seemed not to be related to me this time. Instead they were nudging each other and turning to look off through the trees. I could not hear any more sounds of battle from the clearing and the mechanical sounds of the Ugly craft were gone; either it had finally decided to work or the creatures had disabled it entirely.

Only the faintest sounds of conifer needles underfoot gave away the arrival of more creatures. Two of them paced side by side, cooperating to carry a humanoid form in their mouths. Three shorter creatures guarded the rear and flanks of the pair.

The creatures dropped their cargo, repeating that same eerily formal gesture that the others had used earlier towards my captor. At first I thought it might be Barrett and winced at the thought that I had left him trussed up all those miles back.

More rumbling. I ended up dry heaving again. Whatever this new captive was, “my” creature was very interested. It deposited me none too carefully on the ground and leaned forward to sniff at the fascinating new thing its followers had brought. Meanwhile, the creature rested one of its enormous paws on my back, pressing me down face-first. Now I knew what pine needles tasted like.

I was a little more optimistic now, since I ended up in a position where I was able to finally get a hold of the blaster I had taken earlier – though if wishes were eopies, I would have liked the DL-44 instead. This one had a bit less firepower and I would have to be more precise; it was not ideal given the patchy lighting and the armoring of the creatures.

The creatures’ prize seemed to be only half-conscious. He was speaking, but in a low, hazy tone that told me he must have no idea where he was, and was probably writing off the creatures as part of a dream. We should all be so lucky. I knew the voice almost immediately: Mr. Creepy. Apparently his crew had been unable to find him, after all.

Words came from the pack leader, still in that confusing but familiar language. No direct meanings popped into my head this time, though I still felt like I should understand somehow. I thought of how the presence-feeling went away when the creatures weren’t visually focusing on me. It seemed possible that the translation effect was something that was a result of direct attention. From what I could tell, the leader was engaged in a lively conversation. In spite of my being squished against the ground, I could still identify Broken Tusk from its damaged left paw. The scarred old creature seemed to have a lot to say in its rumbling comments, though it did not (or perhaps could not, I thought) speak whatever language the pack leader did.

As the creature shifted its weight and leaned over to further inspect Mr. Creepy, I was able to move into a better position. Given the right cue, I would make a break for it.



Notes:

For visual reference, the creatures from this chapter look something like the boar-wolves of Endor with a dash of hyena thrown in. They were also heavily inspired by prehistoric mammals such as the Entelodon.

Their eye color is visible through the night-visor because A) they glow and B) the device works according to plot. Ignore the absent-minded writer behind the curtain.

 

You sure love the curve ball, don't you? Well, I'm loving it too! Another excellent update.

The new creatures are really cool! Seems like maybe they use the Force in some way when they communicate?

Love this line:
It must be some sort of omnivore. How embarrassing. If something was going to have the gall to devour me, it ought to at least be a full-time carnivore.

 

Thank you so much! The creatures will feature more in the next part.

Mild spoilers on the speech thing (it will be in the notes for next post too):

Spoiler: SPOILS!

They have various kinds of communication. The ability to talk to other species varies individually according to something Force-related. However, the way they vocalize at each other in low-pitched sounds is drawn from how certain real animals communicate with infrasound. (There's a short overview of how it's used by elephants here: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant/cyclotis/language/infrasound.html)

It seemed like an interesting trait for a dangerous creature because infrasound is believed to have weird effects on humans at certain intensities. Apparently it can induce a really disturbing feeling and might be the natural cause for some people's experiences of haunted places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Infrasonic_17_Hz_tone_experiment . If I were being completely accurate, Lydia might not be able to hear those noises at all. In this case it's hand-waved that they range upwards into what humans can hear; it's just a lot of the sound is below that threshold.

I'd wait until the next update, but wanted to let you know that the story isn't dead. I know it's been a while. The Diary Challenge thread hasn't been updated in forever and I've lost track of whether I'm technically still in completion, but that's okay. My natural average writing speed seems to be about 1.5 posts per month. Somehow, I'm always just barely under the wire for the deadline. Anyway, the next part will probably be up by the end of the week. Soon!

 

So, the way to guarantee lateness is to promise punctuality. The ending of this chapter keeps getting further away the more I write. Evidently I am terrible at estimating how much writing it actually takes to resolve an action-oriented chunk of plot. Therefore, this section comes with a warning: it ends on a cliffhanger. There are evil cliffhangers and malevolent cliffhangers, and I feel that this might be the latter. I was going to wait to post until I had the whole “chapter” wrapped up, but:

A: I am apparently still in the Diary Challenge and would like to stay in if possible, since it lights a fire under my typing fingers. Okay, not literally. That would be uncomfortable. You know what I mean.

B: Finishing the storyline may take another novel-sized amount of text to accomplish. Why, why, why? It was supposed to be a brief side plot requiring a couple posts… Still, I would rather take the time to do it justice.

Here there be cliffs.



(41 AE, Month 1, Day 26 – Part 9)

“Ughh. Why does the whole world suddenly smell like a Rattataki gladiator circus?” the creatures’ newest captive grumbled. It sounded like he was waking up. Critter breath: better than smelling salts.

From where I had rolled over underfoot, I could see the pack leader sniffing at the spacer’s face. Mr. Creepy (or Inahki, as his companions had called him) looked distinctly uncomfortable. He edged backward and the creature leaned after him, growling. It spoke again, the way it had done towards me earlier. There was still a little familiarity to that language, but nothing like before.

“No,” said Inahki. It was a flat and final answer, unlike the hysterical reactions the creatures had mimicked earlier. The lead creature gaped its jaws inches from Inahki’s face in an obvious threat while Broken Tusk arched up and snarled as well. Every swipe of the aging creature’s tail made a clattering noise as the spines rattled against each other. The other pack members looked twitchy. Likely that they weren’t used to seeing their leader’s authority challenged by mere prey.

I wished with every fiber of my being that the spacer would spontaneously drop dead. Considering our previous acquaintance, I would have gladly shot him if needed – or abandoned him to any bounty hunter who wanted his sorry hide on their kill list. However, there was that little matter of the unspoken agreement among civilized beings. You know, the one that says people should not allow people to be eaten by things that look like demons? I had never given this any particular thought before and was annoyed to find that it was more important than I had realized. My motor functions apparently ran by a less convenient code of ethics than my common sense on this subject.

Of all the people who deserved to be thrown to the wolves, even literally, this guy had to be near the top of the list. Creepy spaceport creeper, following our ship and showing up in the middle of nowhere for some creepy reason. Creeper. Inconvenient, stupid, omnivore snack creeper. Creeping well serve his creepy self right if he ended up as supper for the creepy creatures in the creepy forest.

Broken Tusk approached and leaned close to the leader, who in response bent its head close to the other’s so that they nearly touched. Whatever communication passed between them was silent to my ears, but in the end the older creature turned and paced away, giving me a particularly icy stare on its way. My hands clenched on the blaster and I prayed to some of the more benevolent Grannan deities – ones that I don’t believe in, strictly speaking – that I had succeeded at keeping the weapon hidden from sight. The younger creatures with their fidgeting and babbling tendencies were unsettling, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the grizzled old predator who would tear me to shreds in a heartbeat if it recognized the danger. He or she could not have survived to be that bedraggled without picking up a little ruthlessness.

The two creatures who had carried Inahki stood up attentively as Broken Tusk returned to the group and exchanged quiet growls with them. After that, they turned and drove all of the smaller pack members further back away from where the leader held Inahki and I. Pottymouth hesitated and rattled its tail at being exiled from all things interesting and potentially tasty, but loped off after being snapped at by one of the two hulking delivery-monsters.

Shimmering metal gleamed in the darkness as Inahki swiped at the pack leader’s nose with one hand, the contact making a sharp, grating shriek. The gauntlet he wore – a clawed and silvery thing that reminded me of a Twi’lek ceremonial doashim costume – glanced off of bone plating instead. The creature shoved him back to the ground with the broad side of its snout and he let out a Zeltron curse which I will neither translate nor admit to knowing. Let’s just say that the species’ insults are countless but their true profanities are few and viciously honed.

Inahki waved something that trailed sparks in the creature’s face. The animal grimaced and lunged sideways, then slowed down to examine the new object warily. At first I thought it was another weapon, but a clearer look showed that it was – almost unbelievably to my tired eyes – a drink container, much like the one I had seen near the ship. I was baffled. The spacer held the container against his face and some sort of pale, actinic energy sparked between his skin and the item. The glow and ambient crackling noise coming from the can increased. Okay, that explained everything. Not really.

Taking advantage of the commotion, I pried myself loose from the distracted animal’s paw and rolled over to a better vantage point. The side of my foot twinged when the motion pressed it against my inconvenient droid passenger.

It was hard to pinpoint a target, since the creature was in constant motion. I took the chance of firing several shots at its stomach, to no visible effect. That earned me a threatening jaw snap that I dodged by a hair’s breadth.

An icy shiver between my shoulder blades and the low humming of subterranean voices told me that my aggression against the leader hadn’t gone unnoticed by the pack. I expected a joint attack, and yet Broken Tusk and the two big bruisers held the others in check. The former noticed my glance and grimaced, showing every tooth in its skeletal head. Some of them were missing, though not nearly enough for my peace of mind.

Instead of coming back for a second strike at me, the pack leader turned and jabbed down at Inahki with one paw. The impact was accompanied by an ominous crunch. Punctured lungs, here we go, I thought with a wince. Sticking around looked like a worse decision by the minute.

Beast and prospective evening meal faced off in a silent staring contest. I could see the creature’s body sway and for an instant hoped that I had managed a kill shot after all. Then its shadow fell off. At least, it appeared that way.

What I actually saw was this: the creature toppled over and fell limp on the ground, while a moving image that looked entirely like an ink-colored scale model flung itself forward. The shadow’s jaws closed over Inahki’s neck in a move that would have torn his throat out in a solid form. Inahki made a harsh sound that could have been a scream, but he lacked the breathing capacity for it.

I heard a sharp crack and covered my face to protect myself from the brilliant fireball explosion as the electrified drink container that Inahki had been holding blew up. Fiery sparks rained down in all directions. Some of the embers from the explosion landed on me and I rolled to put out the flames. The shadow creature wavered back and then rushed forward again, its outline breaking up into droplets and ripples as though it were made of water.

When I was able to locate it again, I shot the shadowy thing through the rib cage about two dozen times before I gave up and decided to save the power pack. If the question should ever come up, freaky not-shadow beats blaster bolt. This was not covered in the science curriculum at Briareus Tulekahju Memorial Sub-Adult School. Clearly an oversight.

Gradually, the shadow beast morphed into an indigo-black cloud that wrapped around Inahki and then disappeared. Inahki fell completely still as though he were asleep – or had expired. The creatures on the fringe of the clearing stared at the spectacle enraptured. Broken Tusk thundered at me when I tried to move closer and see if the man was even alive.

I was not feeling so great myself. Nothing on its own felt serious except for possibly the knocks to the head, but it was all starting to add up. The adrenaline kick caused by the recent disasters could not last forever. My mother’s warnings about hypothermia were playing on a loop in my mind. Though I didn’t feel like I was going to drop momentarily, sometimes that is how it gets you (or so I had always heard.)

Inahki began wheezing and coughing. He lifted his head and stared at me with a look that I could not read. The dark cloud that had settled on him seemed to be bleeding out here and there; when he breathed out, the mist was that same nameless shadowy color. Something was expected to happen, but I was unsure what or how to avert it. The crawly feeling of being watched increased. Coughing again, Inahki suddenly went into a full-blown spasm, thrashing around and making choking noises. I thought he was having a seizure or something and instinctively went to keep him from damaging himself.

The faintest sensation of air rushing by was my warning. I dodged out of the way and saw the massive form of Broken Tusk bearing down on me.

Given the way Isander described it, I had always thought that it would be comforting to have Force senses during a fight. Now, through the sensations that these creatures gave off – be it through the Force or some other means – I felt like I was getting a taste of that experience. I did not care for it. Broken Tusk’s moves were telegraphed to some extent, the intensity of its focus on me hinting at which way the creature was moving next. It wasn’t enough to save me. Inexorable did not even begin to describe the opponent I faced. Old or not, there was nothing tired or clumsy about this animal. I was barely, just barely, able to keep ahead – but even then, I could feel that my exhaustion would not let me continue for very long.

Keenly aware that my blaster would not hold its charge forever, I used my shots with care. It was not bad shooting, especially considering my physical condition after a night of being battered by the elements and everything else. If nothing else, I’m proud of that. At least one of the shots hit a vulnerable spot that I had identified earlier, one of the creases in the creature’s facial plates. It was not due to luck, either. I hit what I had aimed at. The creature howled in outrage and pawed at its face.

What can I say? I believe in celebrating the little victories. It was small enough. Broken Tusk was back on my tail before I could make an escape, charging much faster than seemed possible for its enormous frame. Grabbing my weapon from my hand with iron-jawed delicacy and tossing it away, the hunter blocked my exit and had me pinned to the ground within seconds.

Eye to eye and so close that its reeking breath misted the air in my face, Broken Tusk demanded, “What are you hiding? Think that you can keep secrets from Lord Zarza, do you?” The deep voice echoed as though we were standing in a cavern.

Clamping down across my shoulders and neck, it shook me and growled. The horrible something-right-behind-me sensation swept through me and my bruised neck protested. It occurred to me that this was almost the same “you just see here, young whippersnapper” move that had been used on the smaller creatures. Despite the rage in its voice, it was being somewhat careful. I remembered quite well how much carnage Ahnjai created when he attacked the pirates at Rafnkell. This creature (or whatever it was), being that much larger – well, it would be the work of an instant for it to dismember me. Instead, it was keeping me around for the moment.



Notes:

The doashim is a sharp-clawed predator from Ryloth. The costume Lydia refers to is noncanon. It includes a headdress with hollow horns (easy enough to fit for a Twi’lek), clawed gloves, and various other bits of finery. If festivals with snazzy costumes and dancing are not popular on Ryloth, I’d be surprised!

Other, belated note: I would like to thank darksideyesplease for his beta/discussion on plot stuff from July-ish (not really chapter specific from what I recall.)

 

Very nice update! Some of my favorite parts:

However, there was that little matter of the unspoken agreement among civilized beings. You know, the one that says people should not allow people to be eaten by things that look like demons?

He or she could not have survived to be that bedraggled without picking up a little ruthlessness.

...he let out a Zeltron curse which I will neither translate nor admit to knowing. Let’s just say that the species’ insults are countless but their true profanities are few and viciously honed.

Given the way Isander described it, I had always thought that it would be comforting to have Force senses during a fight. Now, through the sensations that these creatures gave off – be it through the Force or some other means – I felt like I was getting a taste of that experience. I did not care for it. Broken Tusk’s moves were telegraphed to some extent, the intensity of its focus on me hinting at which way the creature was moving next. It wasn’t enough to save me. Inexorable did not even begin to describe the opponent I faced. Old or not, there was nothing tired or clumsy about this animal. I was barely, just barely, able to keep ahead – but even then, I could feel that my exhaustion would not let me continue for very long.

Thanks for the info on infrasound, very interesting!

Also - So, the way to guarantee lateness is to promise punctuality - isn't that the truth? Happens to me all the time! Anyway, don't worry about your posting schedule on my account, I know writing takes as long as it takes. And this story is definitely worth the wait.

 

Tarsier: Thanks for the comment. I'm always interested to see which parts stand out.

Aww, shucks. But really, thank you. I'm always wondering if my spotty posting schedule is going to drive readers away. I do try, but... well, Yoda would not approve.

A/N: The endnotes for this chapter will be posted this weekend, since I'm finishing up the entry at the last minute to stay in the Challenge. As usual. Thanks to everyone who's stayed with this story. I cannot promise that updates will be frequent or that the story will not jump the shark (it's got to live up to the title, after all), but I'm glad to see that there are still some of you out there. Or that there's a pigeon hitting a lever which refreshes the page a couple dozen times per post. Whichever.

This section has had so many rewrites. And I still have the urge to poke and prod it, but no more. Things have to move forward eventually. The next one should wrap up the cliffhanger-ness. I hope. It's like trying to reach a mirage, honestly; the pretty water just keeps moving off to the horizon...

Anyway, this entry has some not-very-graphic but potentially spooky or gross stuff. Nothing I'd think of as too scarring, but then I'm kind of jaded and have no idea what will bother people (honestly, part of the reason I don't usually do warnings is because I have a terrible sense of what readers will find disturbing/triggering in others' works.) So if ghost stories and/or man-eating tigers (Star Wars equivalent) and the like creep you out very badly, I'd recommend not reading before bed.


Part 10

When the creature finally dropped me, I lay on the ground fighting for breath. Dizziness and another surge of head pain were the last things needed at the moment, so naturally there they were in full glory. It was probably just as well that I did not have the energy to throw up any more. If a herd of banthas had stampeded over me and backed up to finish the job, the results could not have felt much worse. Scrambling back to something resembling a defensive pose took longer than it should have done, and I was terrified that I would pass out. Reflexes were one thing, but there was a disturbing tremor in my stance that wouldn’t go away. I was fast approaching my physical limits and had been for a while. My energy stores were just plain shot, and my ability to concentrate had been fizzling out since Dzidra clonked me over the head. Probably a concussion or something. Not good.

That moment of exhaustion seemed to allow the creature to peer right into my thoughts. It sorted through my memories without bothering to suppress the chaos as it overturned a lifetime’s worth of information. I found myself remembering old conversations, songs that had not been popular in years, bits and pieces of a holodrama from last month, and all kinds of other things. Most of it seemed like useless information, but it was interesting that the strange being was able to access what Lesedi claimed was blocked off from her senses.What “Lord Zarza” found instead was evidently offensive, judging from the way its lips curled back over yellowed fangs. Scary, though it also had me flinching with a residual “call the vet now” instinct from the last couple of years of part-time farming. There was some really nasty gum rot on display. Never again will I doubt the need for the Meuric household’s nearly compulsive tooth-brushing routine for their tusk cats.

“You would come here, where the betrayers left us to rot and raise your hand against MY Qalydon? When you carry the legacy of our Empire in your empty, thin-blooded head?” Zarza’s ears lay flat and its eyes were blazing. It seemed impossible to break away from that stare. “The grey ones following after the memory of that sickly Human, they have not a shade of our glory – but even they know the order of life. Weak ones must fall before the strong.”

Apparently Zarza was sentient. I wasn’t sure whether I had expected that or not. It was speaking Basic; the movements of its throat matched up to the rhythm of the words. The emphasis placed on words and pauses was odd in places, as though the language were foreign to the speaker – known but rarely practiced, a bit like my Bothese and Kuat Osyund. There was something about the way it said “Human” that was… different. Like we were some sort of exotic animal that was rarely seen. No doubt humans were sparse on the ground on this world, though I wondered if the aliens had been born here or elsewhere. If the “grey ones” were Imperials, there had to be some outside contact. Why Zarza was so dismissive and what all the other rambling was about, now that was a complete enigma.

Perhaps these beings were crash survivors driven to a stone age existence and had developed some strange mythology of their own. Isolated communities in hardship conditions can go strange fast. Just look at my maternal ancestors on Galtea. Over five hundred languages and at least fifty more-or-less separate religions spawned in the first half millenium without galactic contact. They still have communities out in the islands that are in hiding from the Empire. No, not the Galactic Empire. The Skelusk Empire. What’s that, you don’t remember the Skelusks? Neither does anyone else, except for these people. Mum’s homeworld is special that way sometimes.

The alien let out a carrion-scented, disgusted sigh. “Unsuitable. But I shall have to make do. Now, let us see what I can do with this mess… such a waste.” The yellow eyes that stared at me from inches away had firefly sparks dancing in their depths and bloodshot red patterns around the edges. “You were barely using this at all. Fascinating work. I wonder how they… now I see. Very interesting.” Just what one wants to hear, really.

Holding me in place with one paw (which had to be nearly a meter in circumference; these monsters made tusk cats look like itty bitty week-old pittins by comparison), the alien curled up on the ground beside me and swept its spiny tail around so that its face and underbelly were covered. It appeared to have decided to just take a nap on the spot. As I carefully tried to work my way out of its hold, I quickly found that my vision was cloudy and I could not quite manage to get a full breath of air. Moving was difficult, as though my limbs weighed a lot more than they had before. I coughed, remembered what happened to Inahki not two minutes ago, and felt a shiver of fear run through me.

No way. I grabbed for the small droid in my shoe – the only sharp object I had to hand, the stunblade having inconveniently ended up in Dzidra’s custody. Zarza was unresponsive to this, not reacting with the aggressive lunge that I had come to expect. The alien gazed at the half-lit, half-deactivated droid, which had stopped a few inches from my intended target, its eye (given the size it should have been hard to miss at that range and I was getting desperate.) My muscles were locked up as though I had just fallen into ice water.

Previously, the alien had only been picking through the contents of my mind. That was nothing compared to its next move, which was to come in and attempt to make itself at home: rearrange the furniture, bring in its own baggage (and was there ever a lot of it, from the pieces I can recall), and shuffle that annoying former tenant off to a quiet corner. I am glad that there is no visual record of that moment, since I was probably breathing out the same shadow gunk as the unfortunate Mr. Creepy. The possibility is enough material for insomnia without knowing for certain. All I can remember of my physical surroundings at that point is a vague gray haze.

Impressions from the alien’s life swirled through my mind. The strength of its – no, her – absolute fury battered at me, opening the door to a flood of emotions and images. Some things made sense and some did not; memories might be clear, detailed sequences or little fragments that were vague and jumbled. Words sometimes were easy to understand – a few names that I’ve recorded here might even be close to their original forms, though there is no way of checking – and sometimes were near gibberish.

She was Lord Zarza Karmazyn of the great Empire, though not the one that I knew. She could make the insolent scream their dearest secrets to the skies and drain the lives of her enemies without laying a hand on them. She was good and would like a nice thigh bone to chew on; she deserved one. A fresh-killed bone full of savory, delicious, energizing marrow.

She had been abandoned, rejected for reasons she could not comprehend.

She and her pack had been good warbeasts, strong and well-trained. They did not understand when their Masters left them on the battlefield. Some of the floating metal beasts had died and the Masters had all gone with the remainder – but they left some of the pack behind, how could they do that? Warbeasts were small enough, they could fit on the transports with the Masters. They were sure of it. Instead, they had been left alone and the Masters had not come back. The castaways were heartbroken, bereft of affectionate scratches behind their shoulder-plates and forced to hunt or forage for their every meal. They were capable of fending for themselves, but they were lonely for familiar people and places. The land was crueler and harder than any test that the Masters had ever put to them, punishing the creatures with terrible cold and extracting every last drop of energy for any scrap of food it had to offer.

She had been betrayed, her life taken and the memory of her victories allowed to fade to ashes.

Zarza had been part of an invasion force that followed a new hyperspace route to the Deep Core. They were Sith. Honest to goodness, monsters under the bed, curses and black magic Sith. (Or at least that’s what the mutant boar-wolf whatsit that was camping out in my head “told” me in very confusing terms. I’m recording this as though I believe my own recall of memories from an alien sentience – or two. Memories that I thought I saw while in a questionable, recently head-bashed, illegal-to-pilot state of consciousness. Needless to say, it’s all messed up.)

At any rate, Zarza commanded a group of warriors (extremely ugly warriors some of them, way worse than the scrapings they haul out of the Slobbering Jerba on a Notronday night) on a large, outdated (by now, thank all the gods and ancient stellar architects and telekinetic parasites) warship called the Karasu. Lost and cut off from reinforcements after the main fleet was defeated, the Karasu and its companion ships had not given up the fight but dug in their heels and fought for every inch of this unfamiliar region of space where the stars huddled together like terrified herdlings.

Things went from bad to worse when their leader Lord Viant went out of his usual slightly strange mental orbit and veered off into the realm of the truly bizarre. The crew hardly noticed at first. They were old hands at dealing with the issues of moody, unpredictable Sith Lords. Privately, Zarza thought that the Sith of mostly human blood were prone to be disturbed from the time they were born. Powerful but prone to violent mood swings and eccentric beliefs. Others could have those problems too, of course; however, she saw the extremes much less often. No one of her own type of hybrid had ever told her that he heard the Left-Handed One speaking death prophecies in the sound of the auxilary engines. It wasn’t long before something fatal happened to Viant; it was ambiguous exactly what. Zarza suspected foul play, but was distracted by more immediate problems.

Lord Viant’s death had left them with an unstable situation. His apprentice was supposed to be next in line and was of high-born status, both of them being descended from some humans who were of special significance. Unfortunately, the apprentice (whose name was an enormous bowl of word salad) did not really have the chops to back up his assigned role, and it became clearer the more independent decisions he had to make after Viant died.

This apprentice was also not as wonderful of a duelist as he thought. Most of the other Sith were not inclined to mourn when Qalydon electrocuted the useless twit and put him out the airlock. Far from getting in trouble, this seemed to assure his place at the top of the food chain. The Sith had some sense of military discipline – mostly that those farther down the hierarchy should have more of it and thus needed choking – but when it came to regulating power squabbles they were just plain messy.

In spite of their difficulties, somehow these stray Sith managed to amass quite a few captured ships, mostly by striking at the borders of patrolled areas and fleeing with the goods before help could arrive (a tactic that reminded me of the pirates of my own experience.) This stolen fleet allowed them to begin conquering territory along the hyperspace lanes that they were able to use – limited in range compared to the modern routes, but then so were those of their opponents. The enemy had fallen before Qalydon’s fleet and there had been discussions. The crew of the Karasu and the other ships began to speculate what might happen if and when they re-established contact with the Empire. They might be able to carve out their own territory, if the leaders at home had the sense to recognize their achievements.

Then they had been lured into a trap. The Endless Void take that one (there was a very specific insult that Zarza used here, but it was long and involved references from her language that I could not even begin to understand) and the idiot Humans she’d lured into her schemes. Sabotage let the enemy’s fire break through and send the Karasu crashing down to this backwater planet, killing all aboard.

The most powerful of them persisted as spirits, but they waited in vain for contact from the living. No one had returned to claim their bodies and bear their spirits back to the tombs where they belonged. The absence of any searchers told a tale in itself: either the Sith were so beaten that they had never been able to return, or else the dead had been deemed unworthy of an honored burial. Instead of resting among their ancestors they sank into the remains of the ship’s wreckage, forgotten by former friends and enemies alike.

She had gone a bit mad in those first years, obsessed with the constant task of reaffirming her connection to the space where she was anchored. It was a tiny place to spend millenia, a pitiful scattering of debris on the ground. The only thing that kept her going was a burning determination not to fade away in this last place that she could claim. The others were much the same and were not sociable company. Having to establish themselves in a site unprepared for such haunting made them territorial and afraid of intruders. Even her lover in life, her clever and animated Qalydon, had blindly fought with her over boundaries that guarded nothing but disintegrating metal shards.

The warbeast had been very old when she discovered the bones of a metal creature scattered in the valley that its fiery death had created. Drawn by the Marrow Scent that resided in all things (but especially in the best prey), she patrolled the edges of the wreck. There was no good hunting to be had here. It was a still, lifeless place where no other animal would set foot. The remains of the passengers had been ravaged by fire and time. However, there was something else that set her heart to racing and made her ears prick up hopefully.

Her Master was here. She remembered many Masters of various humanoid forms and markings, but this one was hers: a tall female with blood-colored skin and a metal arm, who rode her into battle and came to visit her with gifts of sweet bread rolls and braid-haired biped whelps when she had been very good. The warbeast could feel her Master’s presence in the Scent, but could not seem to locate her physical body. She paced in confusion, turning over the wreckage of the ship and upsetting some strange things that felt like Masters and looked like shadows. They flew at her and screamed that she should go away or she would be sorry. She stayed.

Zarza had been frightened and confused when the intruder came. The rage and fear of the other spirits had sent her into a defensive state. It bothered her that the intruder had chosen her space to invade, even after making its way around the whole of the crash site. She attacked with her mind and even tried to summon lightning (this no longer seemed to work for her after her death; it was frustrating.) The intruder refused to leave, and she realized on closer inspection that this was not one of the enemy. Merely an animal, in spite of its Force strength and relative intelligence. As she watched it through the Force in the following days, she began to feel a sense of recognition. It was impossible, and yet this stubborn beast reminded her so strongly of her beloved Dris. The memory of hours spent with her nichitelakosti – of training her, brushing her fur, and preparing her gear for battle – brought a wave of homesickness worse than any she had felt since the crash.

Reaching out tentatively, she found the old Force link that she and Dris used to communicate. It was her long-lost war mount. Lord Zarza, champion of a vast legion and slayer of Jedi, would probably have cried if she were still able. Dris greeted her ecstatically, overjoyed to have rediscovered her Master. The years of separation had been difficult for both of them. Zarza had not wanted to leave her nichitelakosti behind during the retreat from that disaster of a battle. It was necessary and there was no possibility of wasting resources to get Dris back, but that did not make it painless. Long after the first grief faded, she still wondered sometimes whether her old friend had survived. It was not the reason why she had fought so hard during Qalydon’s campaign to reclaim the Eye of the Stars. She could not deny that it was in the back of her mind, though.

Although the reunion was appreciated, she was concerned about Dris. The nichitelakosti was not as young as she had once been. Several days without food and water had taken their toll on an already malnourished body. Her packmates gathered at the edge of the crash site. They would eat one who had succumbed to weakness, but were so far unwilling to risk the shadows and the eeriness of the wreck. Zarza struggled with panic at the thought of being left alone again. That could not be allowed.

She poured all the energy she could spare into the link with Dris, giving her the strength to get up and hunt. Nichitelakosti were designed to feed on the lives of their victims, primarily taking this sustenance from the marrow of their bones. (They also happen to have an exceptionally vivid sensory memory when it comes to food. Ugh. Which is worse, the grossout factor of the whole thing or the fact that I now keep craving some really rare meat?) Through her connection with Dris, Zarza was able to teach her how to draw the maximum possible amount of essence and use it to extend her life. She could not make Dris immortal, but she could ensure that she would live for a very long time. It helped that the nichitelakosti was a different kind of animal in the first place, making her an ideal subject for such preservation techniques. (As with Zarza’s favorite insult, there was a specific phrase for what these nichitelakosti were that made them unique; it just did not make much sense and refused to stick in my memory.)

Her tiny plot of wreckage was boring and Dris’s loyalty made her an easier focus to haunt. It was not long before she abandoned her makeshift “crypt” entirely for the better company of her old warbeast. They made a good team, Zarza enhancing the nichitelakosti’s already respectable cunning and Dris providing senses that allowed Zarza to experience the world more directly than she could as a ghost alone. Together, they ate well. Younger pack members who had been hassling Dris over every carcass were put in their place by her restored strength.

If Zarza occasionally had moments where she was uncertain whose thought had just passed through their increasingly shared mind, she did not worry about it much. She had always been more comfortable opening her perceptions to Dris than many of the higher-ranking Sith were with their own creatures. Many preferred distance from their enemies and disliked sharing in the sensation of a warbeast’s jaws crunching down on blood and bone. Zarza welcomed it. In her opinion, this was why she had success with such an “unmanageable” species of mount.

At first, the other Sith in the wreckage were as wary of her alliance with the creatures as they had been in life. Her persistence eventually wore down the uncertainty. One by one, the shades of her allies began to venture out and form connections with the pack. They learned Zarza’s ways of extending survival (those who did not already have knowledge of such a specialty themselves) and relished in the presence of others with whom they could socialize, quarrel, and compete.

The Sith were not peaceful, but few truly thrived in isolation. The Dark Lord who planted his or her tomb in lonely splendor on some forsaken world was a rarity, and probably had a more than average amount of Human in their ancestry.

She did not really notice a particular point in time when most of the other Sith started to lose their identities, their original memories and sentience dissolving into the nature of their counterparts. She only knew that the day came when the only useful conversations she could have with them were through Force nudges or very simple vocal exchanges, spoken in the animal vocabulary of deep growls that the nichitelakosti used among themselves. The animals’ rumbling speech allowed them to exchange signals from miles away, well beyond the range where most of them could Force communicate. This was much more suitable for the lifestyle of the nichitelakosti than any other language. Centuries of genetic manipulation had given the warbeasts the ability to imitate sentient speech and learn a few key phrases. The haunted creatures retained the ability to mimic (which even the others could do, to a lesser extent.) However, most of their sentient-origin speech was reduced to repeating words they had learned from stranded spacers with extraordinarily bad luck.

Zarza had some idea why this might have happened. The nichitelakosti were complex animals, but their brains were never meant to support full sentience. As the Sith spent more time in their minds, they were slowly becoming subject to the same constraints. The merging had not affected her that way yet. Zarza ignored the days when she could not quite remember something important and her only name was a sound created by humming just so. Going back to the wreck would be worse than dying.

The worst time she remembered was when Qalydon became dismayed by the changes and fled back to his old haunting ground. The host creature Qalydon had linked himself to was strongly affected by the Sith’s mood. He refused to leave and would barely eat, even when brought fresh kills. She did not know what brought Qalydon out of his despair, though she thought it had nothing to do with her since he had been far away for all those weeks. When he finally ventured out and rejoined the pack, she found herself watching him closely. Part of it was worry for him and part was ingrained suspicion from her former life. She made sure to stay nearby and speak to him often, as much to make sure that she remembered her own language as to keep an eye on him. Over the following years, he remained more withdrawn than she recalled of his former self. Zarza and he were the only ones to retain most of their intelligence, though the others were something more than average nichitelakosti. The ones who lost their memories still outlived the non-possessed creatures who lived and died alongside them.

In the rare event of a downed ship, she and Qalydon sometimes attempted to possess members of the crew. (I would call it possession; she objected to this and found my attempts to describe it to myself – based on scary holodramas made up by people who she assured me had no idea what they were talking about – very far from her understanding of just what this thing was. Everything that was related to her powers seemed to have its own special terms that were not translatable into Basic or into my experiences in general.) Whatever one might call it, it did not work. She blamed this on the weakness in the Force of the subjects, but little by little a seed of doubt crept into her mind. What if she was not what she had once been?

I didn’t just have doubts. I was dead certain that Zarza-and-Dris was not quite all there. There was a difference in the quality of her more recent thoughts. They were shorter, more sensory and intense but often lacking huge pieces of context. That was actually the easiest way to divide things, since she seemed to have nearly lost all sense of time and sequencing. If it was more story-like, it had to be older and if it was overwhelmingly strong in taste, smell, or the other senses of the nichitelakosti it must be new. Newer memories were almost impossible to place into any kind of order.

There were frustratingly incomplete, worrying little chunks of information in there.

She remembered ambushing a rider on a speeder bike and dragging him off the vehicle, the sound and smell of the machine exploding as it ran onward into a rock wall, and the discovery that her prey – bleeding profusely from his shoulder – tasted disappointingly of bitter vegetables. She dropped him like a child’s suddenly-boring toy and went running off to – somewhere.

That was Zelenus, I thought, from the pale hair and overall build. Zarza/Dris had no particular interest in what became of him, of course. People just weren’t important that way. They were entertaining, but not real in the same way as her pack. Lunch and chasable chew toys, all of them. Forgotten the minute they were no longer making interesting squeaky noises. Sometimes they did remind her of Zarza’s former life, but it wasn’t exactly in a way that was sentimental towards the squeaky-toys. It just made her long fiercely for a spicy, near-boiling cup of chira (which was not really like caff at all and hard to describe, except that she’d give her fourth lung for it without a second thought after all these centuries.)

She’d seen Odon, too, and Bramer. Odon was barely there, a flash of dark clothing and a brief moment of baffled annoyance before moving on to better targets. The memory of Bramer was stronger. She was standing in the river; her height allowed her to ford the waters and peer over the surface with ease. And above, perching on a rock in the stream – one that was way too small for comfort, given the circumstances – was Bramer. I could feel her senses picking up on scent, emotions, heartbeat, as she circled the rock. Wafting through the Marrow Scent were traces of things that were just as fascinating as the potential for dinner. She sensed immediate mortal fear, but also other, more vital sources of power. There was a hint of anger there, though it was directed far away and he did not seem to channel it towards the present danger. More fascinating was the grief: a deep, helpless, raw abyss of churning misery that drew from loss and the fear of loss. It glowed like a star to any creature able to sense as she could.

Zarza/Dris drew closer, calling out in the voices of his memories. They were not difficult to catch, so close to the surface and so furiously suppressed. It was simpler than true speech, to draw out the listener’s own demons this way. No rephrasing or interpretation needed. She did not need to really comprehend the words she called, pleading for help, threatening, accusing, dredging up whatever lurked under his defenses.

I feel awkward about that now. Nothing specific came through, but still… there’s something a bit awful about seeing someone’s fears get dragged out and put on parade by a talking boar-wolf with halitosis. Even if you don’t know what was said. It’s way too much information all around. I mean, it’s a screwed up galaxy and most of us are screwed up in our own special ways. But we – the sort of people who sign themselves up to spend who knows how many years learning to be Imperial agents for who knows what results, in spite of the fact that there’s not all that much Empire left these days – try to pretend otherwise, since it’s not very Imperial to go around moping about our depressing secrets. At least, I think that’s how it works. Things aren’t really the same for my generation and I don’t know who knows anymore what it should be like. And I’m pretty sure that it would not be okay to go around hugging other students because of mean things that the alien that tried to redecorate my brain might have said.

Because of how her memories were, I didn’t even find out until later exactly how Bramer got out of that mess, or how he got into it for that matter. However, she did remember an awful taste that clogged her nose and made her bury her face in the water, trying to wash away the burning in her eyes and mouth. That was why she remembered Bramer so well; she really wanted a piece of his larynx over that. Tear gas, as I heard from him while we all struggled to stumble from our reinforcements’ hovercraft to the ship. Anyway, that was later.

She had seen the tail end of the fight near the Draigon, but her impressions were no clearer than my own. The nichitelakosti had been more interested in the lights and sound, the feel of the Marrow Scent, and the energy given off by the combatants. The reasons why these beings fought did not matter. All the pack knew was that it was time to chase the bikes and hovercraft that zoomed off in various directions. Chasing flying things was fun, especially if the drivers yelped or said new and interesting words.

There was a fragment, too, of an earlier conversation with Barrett. Mental conversation. That shouldn’t have seemed odd anymore, but it did. He’d contacted Qalydon and told him that a ship full of fugitives would soon be arriving, along with one carrying several grey ones and a prisoner. According to the plan, which was laid out in insulting detail, the criminals would have to pass through the pack’s territory to reach the prisoner. The pack could have any of the fugitives they wanted as long as they brought one particular Zeltron hybrid to the grey ones unharmed. She and Qalydon were sent visuals and an impression of his scent (much more useful, even if the Anzat’s sense of smell was not as gifted as theirs.) She laughed and told the Anzat to go hunting himself. “Earn your own dinner for once, lazy guts!” she said with a snort.

Everything was so confusing and out of sequence that I didn’t quite believe it when I saw Lesedi walking towards me at a deliberate, slightly limping pace.

 

Wow, that was quite a lot to take in. It took me a few minutes to sort through things in my mind, but I think I'm pretty much with you.

Fascinating background on Zarza, et al!

Ack! You wouldn't kill Zelenus would you?

I love this description:

Also love the description of the encounter with Bramer, and Lydia's reaction

More please!

 

Argh, I know I said I’d have the notes up much sooner. The next entry has been making raspberry sounds and generally being a pest. Soon. Tarsier, there’s a reply for your comment at the end of this. I tacked it on at the end because it was long and rambling, much like the notes themselves.


Okay, so I really, really wanted to use spoiler-cuts and have this look all clean and neat. From what I've discovered in the last I-don't-want-to-know-how-many minutes of cursing and reformatting, that is just not going to happen. Ever. Sorry, everyone. I tried, but the Ugly Formatting defeated me. Also, strange things have happened to the links, so they don't all look the same. Just pretend it looks nicer.

While the diary entries themselves should eventually reveal enough to understand what’s going on – or at least I hope so – there is plenty of background that may or may not come up if the characters have no reason to know or talk about it. Hopefully these things aren’t necessary to reading the story, but they may help add some depth.


Notes:

Kuat Osyund is just another name for the Kuat language.

The Left-Handed One of Lord Viant’s premonitions was Typhojem, a Dark Side associated deity of the ancient Sith. His reporting this was kind of the equivalent of someone who starts talking about their personal experiences with angels and demons all the time. Not what any Sith leader’s subordinates really want to hear when they’re stuck in unfamiliar territory…

Notronday is my substitution for Benduday in the Empire’s weekly calendar, since the original day name refers to the Order of Dai Bendu . Can’t have weekdays associated with Jedi founders, really! Think of the children.

The Karasu (the wrecked Sith ship) was a Sith personnel carrier , though I imagine it looking more streamlined and less like a bunch of spiky Legos compared to the wiki picture.

Qalydon is the name of an Outer Rim planet with not much detail, except that it has mysterious ruins and that the New Sith Wars were called “the Curse of Qalydon.” I thought it would be interesting if the name of both the planet and the supposed curse referred to an older historical figure. The word Qalydon also reminded me of the Calydonian Boar .

The nichitelakosti are an OC species, but belong to the group of critters referred to as Sithspawn in the EU – which includes pretty much any being or animal mutated by Sith techniques. These particular Sithspawn are distant relatives of the tuk'ata (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tuk'ata), but with plenty of other Frankenstein-style additions. They were engineered to be war mounts rather than guard animals. Their name is derived from my mangling of the phrase “ničiteľa kostí”, which Google Translate gave as an English-to-Slovak translation for “destroyer of bones.” (One of my ways to name things is to enter a word or phrase into a translation site and see what pops up for various languages.)

Sithspawn

One of the things that I tried to achieve when showing Zarza’s memories through Lydia’s viewpoint is that certain parts of the Sith language and culture are very difficult to translate for a modern Basic-speaking human. Having Zarza’s mind mixed up with Dris’ makes it more jumbled as well.

This is why Lydia is able to understand “Sith”, a concept she has encountered in at least a garbled form, but doesn’t really get Zarza’s profanity or the categories for types of Sith-mutated creatures. She can process the name of the nichitelakosti species, since a name for a kind of animal isn’t as difficult of an idea to understand. She doesn’t get the category, which is based on how the mutation is achieved, what Dark Side techniques are used, what kind of Force energy remains incorporated into the animal, how it uses the Force if it does so, and all of that. The idea was that if you don’t have some idea of what a Sithspawn actually is as a product of Sith alchemy, then the word for how it’s made just doesn’t make sense. (I didn’t decide what the word in question actually is, but it has to do with the creatures’ vampiric abilities. Like the terentateks (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Terentatek), they feed on Force energy by devouring it along with their victims.)

The nichitelakosti have various kinds of communication. As we’ve seen, Zarza and Qalydon are able to communicate directly with individuals by telepathy and by speaking aloud, if they so choose. They can pull Basic words from another’s mind or they can make the Sith language understood by Basic speakers. This happens in different degrees and works best when they are focused and concentrating on that person (Force-sensitivity of any kind helps this process; Sith has a certain universal-translation quality to Force-users if they concentrate on it.) All nichitelakosti also have an ability to mimic voices, much like a parrot or myna bird. This is why they repeat things they have heard from stranded spacers, even though they don’t actually have fully developed language abilities.

The way they vocalize at each other in low-pitched sounds is drawn from how certain real animals communicate with infrasound. (There's a short overview of how it's used by elephants here: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant/cyclotis/language/infrasound.html; they can stay in touch with other elephants over great distances this way.) It seemed like an interesting trait for a dangerous creature because infrasound is believed to have weird effects on humans at certain intensities. Apparently, it can induce a really disturbing feeling and might be the natural cause for some people's experiences of haunted places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Infrasonic_17_Hz_tone_experiment . If I were being completely accurate, Lydia might not be able to hear those noises at all (though she would still probably feel the effects.) In this case, it's hand-waved that they range upwards into what humans can hear; it's just that a lot of the sound is below that threshold.

Sith

There is a lot of data to sift through about the Sith, so this version may have quite a few mistakes.

All of the Sith ghosts here are from the era of the Great Hyperspace War (about 5000 BBY), and their group was one of several that were scattered around the galaxy after the Sith lost that conflict.

Zarza calls the Deep Core region the Eye of the Stars. The Sith had been an isolated civilization for centuries; the majority descended from the original Sith species and from Ajunta Pall’s group of human Jedi exiles. The Sith were only able to reach the rest of the GFFA after following some scouts from the Old Republic. Therefore, they might have had their own names for the new places they saw, such as the Deep Core (which they did travel through, since an important battle of the Great Hyperspace War happened there.)

Most of the Sith crew, including Zarza, were Sith/human hybrids. This was possibly the most common species among the upper classes in the Golden Age Sith Empire based on how their council looked right before the war. Lord Viant and his apprentice were descendants of Ajunta Pall; this was why their ancestry was considered relevant by Zarza.

Zarza wasn’t all that overwhelmed with reverence for the old Dark Lords’ descendants, which shows a change that may have happened at some point – when Ajunta Pall and company took over, it was a humans-only Sith Lord rulership, later there were hybrids like Ludo Kressh among the council, and by the time of the Great Galactic War about 1300 years later, at least some Sith like Praven evidently took pride in their Sith species heritage. This is probably actually due to inconsistency between books and games, but it does seem plausible that there would be some social change in the hundreds of years that the Sith Empire existed.

Lydia’s recognition of the Sith might seem a little unusual and it’s one of the things that were added and removed a few times before I decided to keep it. Most of the books hint at there being very little widespread knowledge about the Jedi and Sith at any point in history. However, it made sense for the Sith to have a place in folklore and mythology. This would make them at least a little familiar to someone with an interest (assuming the Sith weren’t wiped from the books along with the Jedi – always possible, since Sidious was never public with his Sithliness), enough that seeing a black and red tatooed bunch of scary Force-users in Zarza’s memories would ring a bell. Just to be clear, I’ve assumed that there’s no public connection between the Empire and the Sith. Even though the New Republic now knows that the Emperor and Darth Vader were Sith, the Imperials probably never accepted that. Lydia has no idea, though she knows there are Imperial Force-users.

Sith 2: Night of the Were-Sith

The particular form of haunting/possession seen in the nichitelakosti was inspired by Exar Kun’s ghost in the Jedi Academy trilogy. He was able to control Sith-mutated animals (battle hydras in particular -- http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_hydra) and also at least temporarily could do the same with people. The way that the Sith ghosts were originally bound to the wreckage of their ship echoes the method that Kun used to hang around after death; he was pretty strongly bound to the Sith temples on Yavin 4. This was the result of a Sith who had time to plan and prepare, and most other Sith hauntings also occurred in tombs and ruins that were presumably made for that purpose (much of the planet of Korriban was a Sith version of the Valley of the Kings, housing notable Sith and their grumpy spirits long after death.)

The fact that these ghosts were able to stick around at all is stretching things a little, but I’ve assumed that the deaths of the ship’s crew would have provided a final energy boost which the most advanced Dark Side users among them drew from in a similar way to how Kun drained the Massassi to achieve his own immortality. The ship was not as good as a traditional Sith funerary building for preserving ghosts, but it was still emotionally tied to them in a way that was just close enough to work. From the lack of big power displays – aside from the attempts to possess Lydia and Inahki (the Zeltron hybrid) – it’s probably already clear that these spirits are not quite the powerhouses that Exar Kun’s ghost was. They weren’t quite that powerful in life, either; these Sith were reasonably tough but not the top dogs of their era.

As Zarza noticed, they are slowly blending into the minds of their hosts. If Sith ghosts could easily possess people or creatures without consequences, there would likely be a lot more of them wandering around. Palpatine managed it with his clones during the Dark Empire stories, but A) they were his clones and B) they kept dying of some sort of Dark Side-related sickness. Ending up with animal-like minds and greatly reduced Force abilities (they really can’t do telekinesis or other advanced manipulations) is the tradeoff these Sith have made for their escape from eternal ghostly boredom.


```````````````````````````````````

Tarsier: Thanks for the comment! I know it was a strange, strange section. Hopefully the notes and/or future chapters will clear up a few things, but it really is a bit out there and I'm well aware. Results from a tendency to toss in anything that has potential (there are plans), even if it’s a bit ridiculous on the surface.

Please do let me know when things are confusing. My writing is a bit unpracticed. In spite of my best efforts, it's going to end up being messy here and there (understatement of the year.) Recently it's gotten to the point where there is so much material that I've started to go back and do editing notes just to keep track of all the little side paths and references. It's all very much a learning process. Fascinating and addictive, but definitely a bit intimidating.

Spoiler: SPOILS!

: I wouldn’t worry too much. Hint hint. I’m fond of him, as with most of my characters (even the evil ones often win me over), and would only kill him off for a really good reason!

Thanks, that was one part that required some rewrites. It’s often hard to decide if the writing leans too far towards telling instead of showing, but it was an opportunity to let the readers have a hint at the fact that Bramer’s got some deep secrets of his own. So has Zelenus, and Odon, and Lesedi, and also Barrett, who we’ve already seen is not quite what he first appears.

Though there are all kinds of other things going on, one of the core things that I’m interested in exploring is the journey of this younger generation of Imperials, as seen through the eyes of one of their own. When I was first getting into Star Wars as a pre-teen, the Young Jedi Knights books were the greatest thing ever. Now they’re awfully corny, but still fun. Anyway, one of the things that inspired Shark Kibble was a brief throwaway scene where Jaina, on the occasion of her and Jacen’s million zillionth kidnapping, talks to a brainwashed student from the Shadow Academy . The student is fairly boring in what he says, and he’s really just there as a plot device to get Jaina lightning-fried by Brakiss for her nonconformist Jedi ways. Yet there was something about that scene that stuck with me, possibly because the student got a couple lines of description and wasn’t as faceless as the others. Even though he was quoting the Shadow Academy party line left, right, and center, I wondered about him. Who he was, how he got there, why he thought the way he did. He was portrayed as a brainwashed twit, but where did he come from?

So now here I am with a story about a bunch of teenaged and college aged Imperial students. It’s not the Shadow Academy, but a different group within the Second Imperium. The generation right around the early 20’s ABY is intriguing because they really come into an uncertain situation. Later there is a bit of a renaissance and the Empire regains some of its stability and influence. That’s all in the future – nobody has any idea the Vong are going to show up and trash things for the New Republic. There is a main Remnant, but also some factions like the Second Imperium, and at this point there isn’t necessarily any reason to believe the Empire will continue much further.

The young students who show up for this high-tech training facility that is supposed to provide the next crop of Imperial super-agents, scientists, and tech developers are just that. They’re the ones who are left to show up. There’s more mentioned about this later, and how many of the human males in the Second Imperium are already conscripted to the military – so guess who often ends up doing everything else? The women and aliens, that’s who – or at least that’s my theory.

The Second Imperium hasn’t got the advantage of having most of the known worlds to provide their recruits and conscripts, just the systems in a small area that they control. By their resources and sheer population size, the New Republic is likely to be getting most of what would have been the Empire’s best and brightest for their own organizations. In the books, the Second Imperium is out kidnapping street kids like Zekk and recruiting Nightsisters like Tamith Kai . They can’t afford to be as “picky” as their predecessors once were, and that leaves open a lot of potential for a varied batch of classmates. All this is based on the YJK books and this Wookieepedia article which mentions a few sources that expanded on them. Pretty random and obscure, but it makes for a unique setting!