Chapter Text
The known Universe shrank into a thumb sized ring, pressing against the back of Ashkhen’s head. A bit of heat still lingered from the release of the previous shot.
The stench of burned flesh and hair slowly dissipated, the odour of urine gradually took its place. Ashkhen blinked once, twice, but the cone-shaped entry wound wouldn’t release its hold on her tunnel vision.
The Captain of the small passenger shuttle had black hair, she never noticed before. It was a species thing: Nautolans sorted people by scent—a profound Force presence could override the innate coding every once in a while. This time, Ashkhen’s mind wouldn’t budge from the striking contrast between the lurid red of puckered flesh behind the Captain’s ear and his curly crew cut. For a fleeting moment, Ashkhen’s attention turned to the familiar sensation of her own headtails under her laced fingers, and briefly wondered what his hair felt to the touch.
“Tick tock.”
The muzzle traced the quote Ashkhen had inked around headtail number eleven, then nestled snugly against her skull. She was fourth in the row—the three on her left were dead, the twenty-three kneeling on her right, including the second mate and the two-man crew of the shuttle, were actively pissing themselves.
The voice behind the gun behind her head invaded her headspace again.
“Ehn… t’ad… solus…”
Ashkhen closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed, mind stilled, and voice rang clear.
“Step forward, please.”
The man next-to-last in the row did, hands held high. Blue rings of stun blasts hit him from two angles, and he crumpled to the floor.
“Gotcha, shabuir.”
One of the mercenaries stepped over his body, grabbed his arm and pressed an Imperial chain code reader against his wrist.
“It’s Dovrun, all right.” He nodded to his companions, then swung his heavy repeating blaster over one shoulder.
A sliver of the frenzy lifted from the passengers, the blaster from Ashkhen’s head did not. The bounty hunter holding it made a slow half-circle around her, and the muzzle now rested against the middle of her forehead.
“What a suggestive voice you have!” The T-shaped visor loomed over Ashkhen. Beskar showed under the chipped yellow paint of the full-face helmet. “You sing?”
Ashkhen, face to hip with the Mandalorian, shook her head. The speed and ease with which the bounty hunter context switched between execution and small talk gave her whiplash, and she didn’t care for finding out how swift he would switch back.
The muzzle trailed down her nose, circled around her lips and pushed in between her jaws. Lukewarm Hadrian alloy, covered in carbon scorings and holster lint, tasted surprisingly similar to the last vending machine synth-meal she had at the previous stopover. An unpleasant thought flickered across Ashkhen’s mind—the last thing it touched had been the dead man’s head. That, and the front sight scraping the roof of her mouth made her gag.
“Sing for me.”
Oh, all the kriffing sickos across the galaxy!
Ashkhen did the only thing she could—her best. The first line of the chant, or rather, the barely recognizable all-vowel rendition of it was all she managed before the three beskar-clad mercenaries broke out in roaring laughter.
“Oya, mandokarla!” He yanked the blaster free, chipping one of Ashkhen’s front teeth in the process and belted out the first verse of Vode An joined by his comrades. “You stared death in the face then had him shit his pants laughing!”
Two Mandalorians dragged the stunned fugitive away. The last one in the yellow armour pulled Ashkhen to her feet and grabbed her chin.
“That was ballsy, Gi’ka.” He gave an affectionate pat on her cheek in Mandalorian spirit—a teeth-rattling slap on Ashkhen’s scale—and a nod of approval. “You’ve earned the right to live for another day.”
The squad marched out of the control room. When they were out of both sight and earshot, Ashkhen ran her tongue across her teeth and spat.
Dear Diary. First day in the Outer Rim, and I already kriffing hate it.
••• ••• •••
“Attention all Passengers. Please remain seated until the spacecraft has come to a complete stop and the captain has turned off the fasten crash harness sign.”
When the Captain’s brains splattered across the floor, the second mate had gone into catatonic shock. In the absence of crew members with sufficient piloting experience, a lone astromech droid had taken over and charted the emergency detour. The shuttle came out of hyperspace, and was now making its way towards a middle-of-bumkriff-nowhere space station.
Asteroids tumbled past the transparisteel panel of the viewport, revealing the lettering on the object’s side—BOTAJEF SHIPYARDS, TESTING FACILITY 0947.
Belsmuth sector, the unexpected tidbit surfaced from deep within. Must have been one of the last pieces of information that Ashkhen’s mind registered before she fell asleep in Master Xeelo’s Astrogation class. The old Mikkian Jedi’s head tendrils always had a hypnotic effect on her—watching their graceful, sinuous flow as he paced up and down in front of his class put her to sleep nine and a half times out of ten.
“What a horrible experience!” A hand on her arm scared Ashkhen shitless. “It’s okay to cry.”
“I… I wasn’t…”
She was. The middle-aged Human lady in the seat next to hers smiled a knowing smile. Ashkhen’s panic went through the roof. Mourning the Jedi in public? Only she could be so kriffing suicidal!
Shove it all down. Stifle the memories, focus on the present. Sterile, recycled spacecraft air in, pain, fear and anger out. Jaws clenched with such force that her teeth hurt.
It’s over! They’re gone.
Ashkhen relaxed muscles with a deliberate effort—the dull ache in her jaw was too sharp a reminder of her last six days on Coruscant, deep inside an Imperial prison. The officers conducting the investigation had no illusions. Nor had they any qualms.
The embers of the Jedi Temple were still smouldering when Ashkhen was pulled from her prison transport and given a loaded chance. Five days were spent in hyperspace since, with nary a moment in between for her to sit with it all.
Four and a half years since she had walked away from the Jedi, long before the Jedi had been walked out of galactic history. Still, their eradication felt like she had gone colourblind.
Ashkhen warped her mouth into a strained smile, laced her fingers, organics and prosthetics alternated. She would have rather broken her own fingers than to let them be seen trembling while she thought about the Jedi.
“Yeah, I’ve… I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
The station’s airlock slowly extended a walkway to the shuttle’s airlock.
Ashkhen sent a quick ping to her recently discovered but frequently used, informative and concise site on the HoloNet, where-the-kriff-am-I.hst. The neatest feature was that one could map hyperspace jumps by toggling the budget settings. Ashkhen set the meter to broke fugitive of the regime, and watched the systems vanish from the map all at once, not unlike the Jedi had from the Force.
One last planet remained clickable in the lower left corner. Once a prestigious center of culture and commerce, its gleaming spires reaching towards the sky—now its oceans uninhabitable and landmasses covered in shipwrecks beyond salvage; an afterthought for people who were out of options.
Kriffing Taris.
The irony was not lost on Ashkhen.
“Docking complete. Thank you for flying with us today and we hope you have enjoyed your flight.”
The canned PA announcement left a sour taste in Ashkhen’s mouth. That, and the irritating nick on her tongue—the small wound reopened every time it snagged on her chipped front teeth.
Fixing her smile would have to wait, though. She had already used this ID chit three times at layovers, and leaving such a digital trace was only marginally less dangerous than waving a lightsaber and shouting, hey, come and arrest me. Ashkhen appreciated the effort Captain Obrim had put into forging such a convincing fake ID, however, to Nautolan ears Sev Maral sounded like someone who would gain notoriety for getting it on with every single contestant in some shitty tropical island reality holoShow.
Next step, get the kriff of Taris as soon as possible. The Empire’s speciesism and bigotry had already done a number on her shunned amphibious self, and Taris had a few centuries on the Empire in that regard.
The dentodroid could wait. It wasn’t like she was smiling all that much in recent times.
••• ••• •••
The Valiance finished its refueling and maintenance check. The five minutes Ashkhen had spent strapped into the jump seat already made her regret using a Mind Trick on the ticket seller to convince him that she was an airline employee deadheading to Taris. Sentient flight attendants had strict height requirements, the jump seat had been installed with those in mind. Falling short of standards had been a constant background noise in Ashkhen’s life in the past five years.
Still a better alternative to twiddling thumbs waiting for the next available seat, stuck on an asteroid, with an arrest warrant.
The rows on deck Besh had all but filled up. Ashkhen marvelled at the volume of shit people carried on—suitcases that rolled after their respective owners, duffel bags, backpacks, handbags and satchels, and things that looked like cases of musical instruments. One guy even had a flat suitcase handcuffed to his left wrist, manifestly encumbering his boarding process.
With everyone seated and strapped in, the thrusters came online. The medium-sized passenger liner slowly rose from the docking bay floor and turned its nose towards the magnetic shield. Personal attendant droids finished stowing away the last bits of paraphernalia, then powered down for the duration of the flight. Ashkhen, with an air of superiority, adjusted the singular belt pouch that contained all her worldly possessions. Truth be told, it wasn’t solely due to her lifelong habit of travelling light, but also the fact that she had to flee Coruscant with a shirt on her back that wasn’t even hers.
Five minutes until all-systems-are-go. A mouse droid rolled down the aisle in a frenzy and slid into its wall socket. Ashkhen let her head drop back against the thin, hard headrest of the jumpseat. At least she had plenty of leg space.
Four minutes.
The auxiliary engines powered up and sent a deep vibration through the ship’s hull. The Valiance made the transition from the pressurized hangar bay to the vacuum of space through the magnetic shield. Once outside, a series of hisses and sputters echoed through the interior, as the cold gas thrusters made the last adjustments to the ship’s course.
Three minutes.
Ashkhen slowed her breathing to slip into a light meditative trance, an act that was a second nature for Jedi to counter the discomfort of how the Force felt in hyperspace. She found void where her anchor used to be.
Two minutes.
Her breathing quickened. She blinked rapidly, blaming it on the dry, recycled air of the shuttle. This wasn’t what she imagined solo travel would be like. It wasn’t supposed to be this desolate. Ashkhen wrenched her focus from the past and braced herself for the jump without looking too much like a Force user in discomfort.
One minute.
She briefly circled through a couple of Nautolan first names, but all that sprang to mind were Jedi she had known from the Temple, or celebrities who had popped up on her feed. Sev could work with a last name swapped, but forging those were more expensive.
The stars stretched to brilliant blue streaks of light.
••• ••• •••
Ironically, surface-to-orbit communication had never been the strong suit of Taris Interstellar Traffic Control. Their fault was that they tried to direct spacecrafts on the scale of ground facilities they wish they had, and not what they actually had to work with.
The passenger liner completed its second revolution, and stayed steadfastly in orbit.
Clank.
A tremble in the Force.
Thump.
Ashkhen’s first instinct was to ignore it. Acting on the subtle cues of the Force was the quickest way to get oneself killed in these times. However, the bad feeling gnawing at the back of her mind reached a weight and density that it tipped the scale—not acting on a direct warning, or at least not strategizing was also a pretty surefire way to get killed.
Ashkhen glanced around. Deck Besh collectively didn’t notice or didn’t care—the Valiance maintained its orbit at the same altitude as most of the space jetsam that was ejected by departing ships before making the jump to hyperspace. Passengers soon tuned out the soft pitter-patter of junk pelting the outside hull. Ashkhen’s senses however, told her that this particular space debris that had collided with the shuttle was making its deliberate way through on the inside.
The passenger entrance to Deck Besh opened with a soft hydraulic hiss. Ashkhen had a split second to choose between losing her sight or her hearing. She buried her face in the crook of her arm.
The flash grenade set the world to mute for a moment, then the worst kriffing ear ringing ever rended Ashkhen’s mind to shreds. It was purely by chance that her hand found the buckle flap of the safety harness in time. Her half-digested vending machine protein bar splattered onto the floor instead of into her own lap. The disorienting effect of military grade explosives was no kriffing joke.
What shards of attention Ashkhen could scoop up were directed at the entrance. A tall and hardy figure, clad in boarding armour and an airtight helmet, strode in with his blaster in hand. He looked neither like ticket control nor like those slum kids in barely spaceworthy tin cans who offered to wipe viewports and scrub carbon scorings from outer hulls in exchange for a few creds.
Ashkhen barely had a moment to wipe the back of her hand across her mouth, the armoured figure was already approaching with purposeful steps.
Oh, kriff!
Then he turned sharply to the left and stopped by Mr. Sleek Suitcase sitting in an aisle seat.
If he said anything, Ashkhen couldn’t hear. She and the nearby passengers looked on in absolute horror as he reached for the handle over his shoulder and unhooked a vibro-ax from his back. Mr. Suitcase’s frantic thrashing in his seat was cut short when the mercenary hacked his arm off at the shoulder.
Ashkhen watched the flat case fall, trailed by a helplessly flailing arm, as though in slow motion. It hit the floor on its corner and its lid popped open.
The Force rang out.
Ashkhen glimpsed four kyber crystals set in nondescript grey foam inserts, and her mind went blank for a moment.
Mr. Suitcase’s protocol droid came online a moment too late. Its four arms flung apart, hinting at his utility being broader than just observing protocols. The droid, and the general panic that erupted nearby, overwhelmed the mercenary for a precious few seconds.
Ashkhen found the crystals in her outstretched palm, unable to recall when and why she had summoned them. The mercenary’s gaze locked onto her, and she did the first and stupidest thing that sprang to mind.
She swallowed all four.
Then she launched out of her seat and flew down the port side hallway as though the integrity of her guts depended upon it, because it did. The merc could have easily cut the handcuff chain with his vibro-ax, but he chose violence.
Ashkhen’s hearing started to slowly come back, only to alert her of the heavy footfalls stomping behind, and—her stomach dropped—closing the gap. She tore the service corridor’s hatch open with the Force, and jumped down into the hole. Mid-fall, her mind registered that there was a ladder, and people used its rungs for a more controlled descent.
Not many places to hide on a shuttle this size. Ashkhen sped down the corridor and skidded to a halt before the first round door in the row of a dozen.
She prayed to the deities of all the mythologies she had come across in her lifetime that changing the escape pod launching sequences had been very low on the list of infosec priorities for the new regime.
Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! COME ON!
An eternity passed, then the pod came online. Ashkhen dove inside, smashed the big red button on the middle of the piloting console and spun around. The last image of her pursuer was him taking aim at her, then the door irised shut.
Kriff!