Aay'han

[Darven]

... bal kote, darasuum kote,
Jorso’ran kando a tome...

Music fills the cockpit of the small ship, a virile chant reminiscent of days long gone by, and for a moment the lone occupant of the ship's cockpit closes his eyes to shut out the stars swimming before his blurred vision. The depth of space seems to beckon to him with an awful familiarity of kinship, an infinite darkness to match the black hole inside his very core. Grief. Loss. Regret. Pain. And a terrible bitterness. That is all that is left of him. All that is familiar to him now, as it has been for too many years.

He shuts it out. The moment passes. The chant goes on. And he is left to his thoughts.

No, 'buir', you didn't do us a favor when you gave us what you saw as a future. In a way, it was much worse knowing you wanted something more for us, because we always knew we would fail you. We could not do anything but fail trying. It made us realise what we were missing; made us think of the things we could never have when we were marching off to fight someone else's war.

I've had too much time to think lately.

Sometimes I think we would have been better off if they'd not given us a mind to think with. It would have been better if they'd asked for a droid army instead.

But we were pawns in a much bigger game. They knew why they didn't want an army of droids. Whoever 'they' is. Definitely not the Jedi.

Because it's all about their corruption, isn't it? I've had that much time to work it out, and now I wonder if I'm the only one to see it. Did you, before you passed away? Did your 'sons' see it just as I have? But you told them they were well nigh invincible, if they had seen the truth, they would have tried to stop it. Or have they? Tried? They are dead, aren't they? That's why I haven't found any trace of your 'clan', isn't it? I don't know.

But I know about the Jedi. They were pawns just as we were. I don't know who had the worst fate of us. We were handed to them on a plate, a tool to grasp at their weakest moment when all would have been otherwise lost, and in taking up the tool they doomed themselves by going against their own tenets to do what they must. Did they willingly take up the weapon that was their own undoing? Did any of them understand? Jusik did. He left. He couldn't handle the wrongness. The corruption of their very core. Maybe their leaders did, too, but it was too late. They were just pawns.

His gaze shifts to the small framed holograph attached to the side of the main console. A young human girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, is batting away small bolders with a golden-bladed lightsaber, an earnest look on her face until the last of the bolders are lying at her feet and she turns her face in the direction of the viewer with a curious look that quickly turns to something akin to happiness for a second before it turns sad, and then away.

And I corrupted her.

[Nya Halcyon]

In another part of the Galaxy...


"Listen, sleazebag - we had an agreement, and I expect you to honor it!"

Anger made her blood boil. Scenes of violence flashed briefly in her mind; scenes where she was administering all kinds of tor -justice- to this di'kutla aruetii who thought he could get smart with her just because he thought he had an unknown doing his wetwork, but she clamped down on the imagery with an iron will - before she'd feel the faint stirrings of something she was not willing to give into right then.

It'd taken her two standard months to track down the miserable jai'galaar'ad she'd taken the contract for - not because she was slow or inexperienced (far from it, actually, she'd been at it ever since her thirteenth birthday - but they didn't know that) but because the spineless worm had taken refuge with a group of ultra-pacifist Bimms and it had taken her that long to persuade them to turn him over to her. Of course, she could've just waded in and taken him by force, but... that would have been wasteful. Ne pirimmuy tal'galar par naas - no point spilling blood for nothing; she wasn't getting paid for more than a capture-alive. So it had taken a while; but she got him - which was more than anyone else had managed.

But Boryak was trying to convince her otherwise, and that was what was really making her angry now. She didn't like getting angry. It got her in trouble. With Gotab, with herself, with the galaxy as a whole; these days, she gave everything to avoid getting angry.

She knew where it could lead. She knew only too well.

"Hey, like it or leave it, girl - shouldn't've taken all this time if ya wanted full payment."

She saw his lips move but wasn't paying attention to his words. No need. He was still trying to argue. With the vibroknuckler in her right-hand glove slid out of its retracted position, she took one step closer to him before he could even move - close enough to see the ast'ehut pores on his ast'ehut nose - and dropped her voice down to a guttural whisper.

"Ne shab'rud'mando'ad, aruetyc osi'yaim!!! ... look down, hu'tuun, and tell me what you see!"

The fool didn't know what he'd got himself in for. One didn't just try to cheat her out of four thousand credits after she had done the job. He seemed to see that, too, now that he looked down and saw the tip of her blade resting against his stomach. The fear that rolled off him hit her a second later, but to her surprise it was minor. As if it meant nothing. She saw him narrow his eyes.

"Ya gotta be kidding me, girl, you're no Mandalorian! The last Mandalorian I came across would've had you for breakfast - put that thing away, at on--" he said, but didn't get further as the blade slid into his intestines and laid him open from gut to neck with one smooth move of her hand.

Too bad. She couldn't have let him get any further. It felt righteous. He deserved it. She hadn't even done it out of anger. She'd pushed that aside at that last moment, and done her duty.

She was getting better. A regular jate jetii'hibir, these days. Maybe someday she could be one again.

She left the puddle of steaming dead human behind her after relieving it of the contents of its pockets and strode off, grabbing her "prisoner" by the cuffs as she walked by. Now that Boryak was no longer interested in him, it was up to her to deliver him back to where he'd come from - or find some other use for him.

[Darven]

Corruption is a two-edged blade. She made up her own mind.

A hand moves up to his face, tracing the deep scar running from his hairline down to his jawbone. It recalls him to his responsibility.

It was I who made up her mind for her, the day....

Both hands now go to his temples, fingers pressing hard into the skin against the bone there, as if that could ebb the flow of thoughts and emotions. He fights for control. He cannot bear thinking about it again.

Silence envelopes the cabin, for a long moment, during which he concentrates on the bright dot moving behind his closed eyelids. It calms him, a little, and finally he lets his hands sink down to grip the armrests of his chair instead. He is feeling angry, now, for some reason. It must be the drugs. He kicks the console with his booted foot.

I'm a di'kut. The ship's not done anything to me. It's been a trustier companion than some others, a constant in a life that's had none other.

His mind still busy, his thoughts are at least off the wrong topic.

No, not true. There have been constants; they simply ceased to be. And it's easier on the heart to say that there have been none. How strange - that it should be easier to accept this loneliness rather than the thought of what I've lost... who I've lost.

The cabin walls are suddenly closing in on him. Or so he imagines.

This ship is too small for me these days. There is still only one of me, still only one.... - a look at the framed holograph again and the bitter taste of defeat is back - ... and yet, it was never too small when she was with me. Why is that?

A subconscious wish to make amends? It's too late for that. It'll all be over soon.

He swallows, hard, but this is a truth he has accepted a long time ago. Not like some others.

I'm dying a little more each day. I'm 37 but nearing 70. The aiwha-bait didn't grow us to last. They didn't have retirement in mind when they created us. The perfect soldier, loyal down to the very last gram of flesh, willing to go out in a blaze of glory as long as that belonged to someone else. We were an expendable commodity. 'Throw a few of them into this engagement, a few into that - if you run out of them, you can always get more'. And leave the dead and dying behind for the carrion beasts to devour.

I'm wondering if they planned for us to have feelings. I've met troopers who weren't able to think of anything other than where the next meal and the next engagement was. It's frightening in all its simplicity. And whether they intended it or not, it would have been the perfect creation, the perfect culmination to their research. A mirror to their own apathetic soul. If they had any left.

The claustrophobia is growing worse now.

I need to do something. There has to be something I can do. My cells might be dying a little more every day but I'm still here?

But there really isn't. No contract, no job. Nothing but the dead of space to stare into all day long. The company of strangers isn't welcome to him. And he is not welcome in the company of familiars.

He takes another pill. It will make him sleep. Give him dreamless sleep.

[Nya Halcyon]

They were back in her ship and in hyperspace - the prisoner once again safely ensconced in the makeshift holding cell - before she let herself relax a little and take stock of the new situation.

Boryak had initially offered her 15,000 credits for a live bounty, paying her 2,000 in advance. When she'd finally caught up with the target and brought him back here, Boryak had offered her 9,000; but the cred chips she'd found on him had been no more than 6,000. Which meant he had either an overblown idea of his own bartering skills or hadn't intended to give her any. And judging by the fact that he'd thought her a wannabe-Mandalorian, she would have put all her creds on that last option.

Which would at least have been a lucrative bet if someone had taken her up on it. Because all things considered, even the 15,000 of the initial offer wouldn't have been enough to cover all her expenses; nevermind the debt she was running up with that yaiyai'yc ge'hutuun of an Aqualish back on Nar Shaddaa. She'd spent the down-payment on getting the intel on the bounty's location, and the 6,000 she found on Byorak would be gone as soon as she got back to base.

Perhaps she shouldn't have killed the man so fast - with a little subtle convincing she might have gotten something more useful out of him. There had been something off about him - he hadn't looked wealthy enough or high up enough in the food chain to be able to afford posting a bounty on someone - but she'd figured he was a go-between for the local government; the bounty was a tax inspector after all, which would make sense in this time and age where corruption within governments was a common vice and some jobs were just a bit more dangerous than others.

Of course, now that she’d killed the go-between, chances that she could still find some way to get paid were extremely slim. Her carefully honed senses had told her it was best to put as much distance between her and this planet as fast as she could, and she’d done just that as soon as she’d got the bounty secured. She’d only made the mistake once not to listen to her instincts, and sworn to herself never to do so again.

An ill-supressed pang of guilt rose in her at the thought, but she quenched it fast enough. No use going down that path. Especially not now.

A few parsecs out of the system, she dropped the ship out of hyperspace again. Her senses might have told her to get away, but there had been no pursuit and no one challenging her departure. Perhaps not all was lost.

Grabbing her helmet from the empty co-pilot’s chair, she crammed it onto her head and gave her senses a few seconds to adjust to the different visuals, then headed aft. It was time to have a little chat with the “former bounty”, and see if he could still be useful in some way to clearing her debt.

[Darven]

And then he sleeps. And the dream comes unbidden, unwelcome, unavoidable – and always the same. It is as much a part of him now as his brothers were a part of him then. There is no respite. There can never be. It is part of his punishment, part of what he is.

In the dream he is with his brothers again and for a brief moment he can no more than rejoice in their presence. Home is where his brothers are. Even though they are not the ones he was decanted with; his old squad-brothers died early in the war, but that matters little because the men in his new squad have become his family now. They have shared everything with him – every new experience, every moment. He knows them as they know him.

But that thought gives pause to his joy, and the brief moment of pure happiness makes way to the growing dread of what he knows will come. For they do not know all.
They do not know the doubts riddling his heart, they have never experienced any cause for doubt. They do not question their instructions; their unwavering loyalty was bred into them from the first hour of their existence. They do not fear the future – or fear death. They are not the same.

Physically, there is no difference. In training, there is – he is a commando, they are troopers. They say a commando is worth 25 troopers. But his brothers of Decoy Squad five have had training equal to his – it has been his job to do so. They are part of an elite group of soldiers – the 501st legion.

And this day, this moment, they are climbing the steps that leads them to the pillared entrance of the Jedi Temple, in the wake of their new commander whose black cloak is billowing behind him, caught in the draft of his confident steps.

This day, they go to murder the Jedi.

[Nya Halcyon]

Sometimes it felt to her as if in her haste to abandon her home, she’d left a vital part of her behind – the part that kept her out of trouble and made her think things through. Everything was just a little more difficult, more obstinate, more… sluggish…. since she’d left. She’d made a lot of the wrong choices since then. It had been almost eight years, but it felt like an eon sometimes. An eon filled with nothing but making mistakes. An eon of missing the few people who had been important to her.

An eon of missing the person she hated most….

The Grat’tua Ner wasn’t a small ship; she’d been built for something more meaningful than carrying a single person and the occasional “visitor”, and before she’d fallen into Nya’s hands, her primary function had been to act as passenger transport ship, with enough space to comfortably accommodate a small group of beings. The long corridor to the aft cargo bay had once upon a time been richly carpeted, but it had been years since the ship had seen its last glory, and the floor she walked on now only showed frayed graying patches on both sides. It wasn’t enough to cushion the fall of her boots, and the echoes of her solitary walk filled the otherwise silent corridor.

It wasn’t the first time she’d walked through it that the eerie silence was affecting her mood. She preferred surrounding herself with things, sounds, beings – distractions, in short; because the long silences and stretches of solitude left her to too much thinking.

She prided herself on having learnt to be able to keep her emotions and thoughts in check; but when silence prevailed for too long, it eradicated her resolve. And lately, that had happened too often.

When she reached the aft cargo area she released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding; it sounded overly loud in her ear. For a moment, she stopped in her tracks and just looked around.

The aft cargo bay had once been used to store the passenger’s luggage as well as any provisions the crew and passengers needed. As such, it hadn’t been decorated like the rest of the ship and been left relatively bare. Nowadays, the only thing stored inside it were the bounties she picked up.

The holding cells and the cryo-containment box against the left side of the ship’s durasteel hull had not been standard equipment – it had been those two additions to the ship that had plunged Nya into accumulating a mountain of debt with various beings on Nar Shaddaa. And in one of the three cells now sat the miserable little hu’tuun that was hopefully going to help her decrease that debt…. somehow.

Walking over to the cell, she stopped at an armslength of the bars and, for the first time since taking him into custody, looked him over, trying to see if there was anything she could see beyond what the various descriptions of him had said he was.

[Darven]

But with every step he climbs that long staircase to the top, the dread seems to thicken the blood in his veins. He knows this is wrong. He has served with Jedi, has met some of the Order’s leaders – they do not deserve an end so vile.

How can it be right?

Everything about this is wrong. Everything.

The commander casts an eye over his shoulder, as if sensing his doubts. Then icy resolve newly floods through him – the wish to do as he is told compelling him onward, and his doubts is no more but a small flame with hardly any life left in it to keep burning. He must go and do as he was commanded; he must go and kill the traitorous Jedi. There cannot be room for doubts. The Jedi are traitors, and deserve this fate. They MUST die.

Then the commander turns his head forwards again just as he reaches the top, and in Darven’s head the certainty of his purpose grows faint again.

When he reaches the top only seconds after their leader, his commander is already engaged in conversation with the enemy. The Jedi that confronts them does not look like a traitor. Instead of the dangerous and deadly foe they have been told to expect, there is an old grizzled man waiting for them, who seems nothing but confused at their sudden approach. The worry on the man’s face grows with every second as he keeps asking the commander - who he still perceives to be his fellow Jedi - what is wrong. At last, the Jedi gets his answer when the commander activates his own saber close enough to the Jedi’s face that the igniting blade stabs into his head. But even in death, the Jedi does not look anything other than benevolence personified.

The man asleep on the chair twitches, slightly, and hitherto smooth features contort to a grimace that make the deep scar running along the right side of his face all the more prominent, and set his face into a mask of pain. His hands clench and fingernails bite into the skin of his palms, yet he does not awake from that. The dream has too deep a hold over him to let him escape so easily.

His hands balled into a fist, Darven fights the urge to step foward and come to the Jedi's rescue. Yet it would be too late. And his orders are clear. He cannot fail to obey them. He was created to obey. He was bred for this life. He was bred to be loyal. It is not for him to question orders.

The commander once again looks back at his troops. And for a moment, Darven's fear drowns out all else: a demon is staring back at them, with eyes full of blazing fire and a face contorted by hate. This should be the foe they should vanquish, not the Jedi! But then the world is a sea of calm resolve, icy and sharp their purpose, once again. Follow Darth Vader. Kill the Jedi.

No room for doubts.

[The Man In Black]

The Man in Black was ironically dressed in beige today. Other then the odd style change he was quite content with himself, and he sat cross legged in the corner of his improvised cell. He meditated. Calmly, he supressed an urge to break free, kill the woman, and have done with this whole situation. However 8 months of living with pacifists did wonders in supressing those urges.

With a long practiced eye he scanned his confines and examined it for weak points. Forcibly, he shut his eye. Calm... He took a deep breath. The Man was slightly better.

Arrayed in front of him lay whatever the woman who had captured him deemed safe enough to let him keep. Not that it particularly mattered, he had a feeling she was out to kill him. Still, he had some pocket change, a battered pack of smokes, a reciept for mood balancers, some lint, and a piece of string.

He had a feeling she didn't know who he was, and he wasn't about to correct her. Somehow, he figured his death would be that much more painful if she did. With a weary mental shrug, and another self-reassuring breath, he tried again to meditate and focus on the steady hum of the engines or something equally steady until he heard footsteps approaching.

[Nya Halcyon]

Her prisoner did not look as old as he was.

That was the first thing she noticed, now that she looked at him more closely. She'd read his file and seen the age - this man did not look like an 85-year-old. He looked too fit, for one.

He was sitting in the far corner of the cell, cross-legged and apparently meditating. His eyes were closed, and he had not made any outward sign of having noticed her presence, but she did not need her other "skills" to sense that he knew she was there. Subtle hints in his body language told her that she need only make a mistake, need only relax her guard for one second, and he would take his chance to try and overcome her.

'Let him try...!' her mind snarled at the thought, with the knowledge of superiority over any being imprinted there since her childhood. But she flushed the thought out of her mind as fast as it had appeared, and it made room for the uncertainty she truly felt beneath the veneer of ruthlessness.

How could she not have seen this before? The man in the cage reminded her of a predator - not the harmless creature she'd hunted for the last three months, the doddering spluttering fool she'd taken from the Bimms and put into that cage. Not the terrified wretch she'd dragged to the rendezvous with her employer. Had her killing of the man who had put out the bounty on him made him grow a spine? No. It could not be so. It was more than just that.

For the first time in months, she truly opened herself to her inheritance. It flooded her with the usual hollow promises, the sweet memories of what had once been and what could once be again. Bile rose in her throat at the taint she still perceived to be underlying it all - the taint that so easily caught hold of her whenever she felt even the faintest stirrings of anger. It hurt her, burned her senses in an almost physical way, to hold it now, but hold it - and use it - she must, now.

Imbued with the force, she reached out to the stranger sitting in front of her and------

------ found herself facing a blank wall.

She could sense him in the force, but he was like an unwritten piece of flimsi, a blank page, a being totally devoid of emotions - a mind she was unable to penetrate.

Perplexed and more than a little worried now, she let go of the bitter connection to her powers, and stared at the man.

"Tion'ad cuyi gar...?"

The rasping whisper of her own voice filled her ears. No sound penetrated through the helmet; she'd not activated the comm. She swallowed, and it, too, filled the silence. She fought to control the angst she felt at encountering something she could not define so easily. Fear was not an emotion she was used to, and it took her longer than usual to fight it.

The silence in the cargo hold grew, and he still had to acknowledge her presence. When finally she had overcome the sudden panic, she felt reassured at least that none of her emotions had shown outwardly. That, also, was what armor was good for. It presented a neutral "face" to the outer world, and one that could not be pierced by ordinary creatures senses.

"Who are you?" she finally repeated, in Basic, when she was sure that her voice was steady.

[The Man In Black]

The Man in (temporarily) Beige opened his eyes slowly and turned to regard her again, looking her up and down slowly. He had heard her question, his answer was probably less than satisfactory. To her at least.

Unfortunately his plans of being kidnapped, killing his captor and her employer, and then disappearing again had gone awry. The woman had taken him to the man, then killed him. It was obvious to him, at least, that she wasn't very good on the business side of things. For the moment, it seemed, he was to live, until she figured out what to do with him. So it goes.

"I am your prisoner; gar di'kut ad." The last was said under his breath and topped off with a wink. If she was a true Mandolorian...

[Nya Halcyon]

"Osi'kyr!" The exclamation escaped her before she could clamp down on her surprise. Now more than ever did she want to know what he was - his use of her language opened several possibilities to her that she hadn't thought of before, and possibly explained what she had felt.

It did not, however, explain all. Could not. Just because he spoke the language well enough to insult her, did not mean that he was what it implied.

Now more than ever she needed to know.

"Gar lise jorhaa'ir mando'a ... Tion'cuy mando?"

[The Man In Black]

The Man smiled exposing his pearly whites, his gaze seeming to penetrate her visor and peer directly into her own eyes. Slowly, he got up, putting his hands on his knees and working his way up from there. On his way, he grabbed his crushed pack of cigarettes. Hobbling over to the front of the 'cell' he swung forward, propping himself up with his arms.

His stare never left her. Neither did his smile.

"Tion'jor gar vaabi baatir, dala?"

He laughed in her face for a moment before retreating to his secluded corner of the cell and plopping down crosslegged. He put the cigarettes suggestively in front of him. Now was the part of the game where he made the demands.

"Give me a light."

[Nya Halcyon]

So he was going to play games with her.

For a moment, when he had looked at her so intently, she had wondered whether he was truly possessed of some greater power than her. But no - she dismissed that possibility. She would have at least sensed that much - Gotab had trained her well in the ways of sensing even the minutest trickle of force energy, and her inheritance had provided her with an added edge, too.

Still, she tried to find a reason behind his words that would make his decision less foolish. If he was indeed Mandalorian.....? He certainly seemed to know them well enough to know what would trigger a response.

Fortunately, she was something besides that. While possessed of the infamous short fuse, she had a better grip on her emotions than the rest of her so-called "race". But even so...

It was clear to her that he seemed to think he had the upper hand - for whatever reason. And she wasn't going to allow that.

"As you said, ge'hutuun - you're my prisoner - so tell me or not, but I still have to decide whether it's useful to keep you alive."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she stared back at him, modulating her voice that no trace of annoyance bled through. She was all icy veneer now again. Surely this di'kut would realise that she could simply decide to flush him out of the airlock if she wanted to? His life was in her hands.

Leaving his demand for a light unheeded, she steeled herself and called upon her other skills again - and laced her command with as much persuasion as she could.

"Ke ven rejorhaa'ir ni meg'ad gar cuyi!! You will tell me - or face death!"

[Cahnyar Peran]

"I do not like it."

Cahnyar dismissed the attendant almost as soon as she had brought the gown to the mirror. Looking defeated, the young human returned the garment to the rack, to find another more fitting.

"And this one, Madame Peran?"

She turned around, to find a Rodian holding a light black garment accented with speckled red feathers at the hems. Cahnyar tilted her head slightly, sucked on her lower lip, and sent that attendee away as well.

Her mind was elsewhere. That sordid piece of lerk Boryak was late, and that never meant good things. This line of work didn't have sick days. Late people were either double crossing you or they were dead, or they were double crossing you with the anticipation of becoming dead. She had a symposium to host, and she'd intended on making sure that her pet goon didn't get her fur dirty in front of more decent colleagues.

"Alrect, vhy iz Borryak not back? He knowz I vant punctuality."

Alrect, her Bith lackey and abuse sponge, dipped his head apologetically. Annoyed, Cahnyar stooped down, removed a dainty designer shoe, and belted him across his bulbous head.

[The Man In Black]

The Man in Black tilted his head, cracking his neck, and locked eyes with her again. "Lets play a game, shall we? Just because you locked me up in a cell doesn't mean that we can't be friends. So therefore I propose a trade. First lets start with a name, give me your's and I'll do like-wise. Give me a light, and I'll tell you who I am."

Smiling, his cold eyes drilling into the vision slit of her helm, he said "you know, I don't fear your petty threats of death, so I suggest you find a new tactic."

Her anger was palpable.

[Nya Halcyon]

If he had been able to pierce through the helmet plating, he would have seen the frown etched onto her face. She had been trained well, and had an aptitude for such manipulations, but her command might never have been uttered for all the reaction he showed.

This provided an additional puzzle.

It also told her that she had been di'kutla herself. She had called upon "werlaaryc duse" - in other words, the mystic crap - when instead she should have used her other skills. It had led her astray right from the beginning. Know your targets, understand them, think like them - she had been taught well to do so, yet ever since she'd left home, it seemed she'd gotten further and further away from what she had once been, too. It was starting to scare her.

She was still standing on the same spot where she had come to a stop moments before, the armor not betraying her growing fear - yet her anger had got the better of her and made her use her powers unwisely. She should never have done so.

To have done so, no matter the outcome, was not acceptable to what she was. Something, some recklessness inside her, was undoing everything she had ever lived for, for as long as she had... been Mando ... and was seducing her from her path with whispers of an illbegotten power that she had been trained not to heed. Why was she doing this?

His words barely penetrated through her own musings. Right then, for all the enigma he presented, she couldn't care less. She was certain she was facing a bigger enigma within herself, and that had to be faced first.

Abruptly, she turned around and marched off, her prisoner momentarily forgotten. She needed to get back to the cockpit and think about this.

[Cahnyar Peran]

It wasn't until Cahnyar was nearly in her sedan when Alrect pulled her aside. He whispered to his boss, then shrank away, protecting his bulbous cranium and the red and tender spot that had received a flying shoe a few minutes later.

No response came. Cahnyar's fur bristled, and she demurely requested a stim from Alrect, who lit it for her.

"Zo that iz that, no? What an idiot, to get killed. To think, I vaz going to pay an idiot. Dock hiz pay, pozthumouzly."

Alrect, relieved to not be chastized or beaten, bowed graciously, and began to excuse himself...only to be called back to attention by a snapping finger.

"Ve need a new man to fix thiz problem. Namez, Alrect, namez!"

The Bith fumbled with a datapad, and began to furiously sort through a contact list.

"Madam Peran, how about these three?" He cautiously passed the pad to his boss. She smoked, mulling the thought as the rest of her retinue waited in the background. The sedan wasn't going anywhere until she insisted.

She tilted the pad sideways, then her head sideways, then scrolled down some more.

"The middle one. Darven. He better not be another idiot. Go, do it Alrect I don't have all day."

[Darven]

------

The console pinged and pulled him out of restless sleep. He had no sense of the dream but knew it must have been there; it had been his steady companion for many years now. It gave his bones a cold chill.

Groggily and too stiff even for a man of his age, he sat up and grabbed his helmet which was sitting on the empty co-pilot's seat next to him.

It had been her seat, always... still looked empty without her in it, even after all these years.

The console still pinged. He shook his head free off these stray thoughts, pushed the helmet down over his head and hit the comm button. Hopefully it was going to be something to do.

The ship's small holonet unit sprang to life - and a moment later the fuzzy blue specter of an unknown Bith resolved in the air above it, buzzing and zapping with stray light.

It spoke without pause. "You are the bounty hunter Darven? My Mistress requests you to join her at a ---" - the specter turned aside and temporarily vanished halfway out of the field, most likely to consult something or someone, then popped back in - "--- at 1900 at wine tasting in the city of Visdic, on Uyter. I am transferring the data to you now. Be there."

And before Darven had even uttered a word, the transmission died again, leaving him sitting there with an unformed question on his lips. Instead, he consulted his datapad which was still receiving the data transmission. Impatiently he waited for it to finish, then, finally, called up the info.

Cahnyar Peran. Ah yes.

He'd offered her his services a few weeks ago - her, and a multitude of other small fry crooks in part of the mid rim. At last, something had paid off.

Darven set in a course for Uyter, wondering what a wine tasting would be like.

[Caran V'al Counis]

Her frustrations were putting this entire situation in one endless and most vicious circle. The blunt tactics, the petty threats did little to budge him and his position. The offer he'd made pushed her into storming off. Apparently, his tactics weren't working too well, either. This woman, irrational as she was, may likely be the clue, the door he needed. It wouldn't do to frell up here. The Man In Black - Caran V'al Counis - would unveil himself. Drop his guise, and show just what he was - human. Knowledgeable, skilled, but human nonetheless. Perhaps this little shock tactic would help his foray, while the honesty of it just might appeal to her better nature, if she had one.

The jury was still out on that case.

Within a scant minute or two of the decision being made, his disguise was off and away; a second skin stripped, the cocoon broken. His chiding, teasing and inquisitive demeanor, however, remained. The man that remained was vastly different from the one she had seen to capture.

It was like this that he waited for his rambling, demanding captor to reappear, watching intently through the spaces between the bars of the cell's viewing wall at the door she had stalked off through. Maybe she would come back with a light? Who knows... Not likely. His own would be a nice touch - she had after all removed it from him, along with anything else that had potential to be weaponized. It all just made his little venture that much more interesting.

[Nya Halcyon]

"Now this won't do at all," she muttered, into the open and empty space in front of her. The bountyhunter was back in her pilot's chair, helmet in her lap, chewing on a piece of sweet veshok bark. It was a habit left over from her days in Ruik's army. It's juices had always had a calming effect on her when times were rough - something she had no doubts Gotab wouldn't have approved of, for all his talk about not relying on the Force.

She would have to get a grip of herself. Killing that fool Boryak had been an unnecessary action - she could have handled that better. And her prisoner... he was a total enigma, and somehow beyond her. Things were taking an unpleasant turn once again, threatening to spiral out of her control and put her face to face with her worst fear. And fear, just as anger, inevitably led to a total loss of control. And she would not let that happen. Not again. Never again.

"No...," she muttered once more, but her voice sounded like a weak thing in the small space of the cockpit. It also somehow managed to sound wrong - in the sense that she was using the wrong language, in more than one way.

'I'm not a weak thing. I know better. I will not lose control.'

"Nayc!" she said aloud, in Mando'a, and that was better. It had backbone. "Bic ni skana'din! I'm not going to lose it just because of some old shabuir who thinks he can best me in playing games. That's my cage he's sitting in. And that's where he's staying, no matter what he tries!"

She'd never been one to lose herself in endless thinking. Yes - she'd lost it a bit, and felt fear; but she'd feared the unknown, feared what her Force senses couldn't understand. She'd become a victim of the Force once again. And there was only one solution to that - shut it out again. Become herself, and not a mere tool of the Force. Gotab would have said, Gar cuyi verd manda, ne jetii.

And that was that. Crisis over.

She jumped up from her chair, slapped the helmet back down over her head, and walked back aft at a brisk pace. Time to solve a different problem: what to do with her 'guest'.

"Space him, maybe?" she said to herself in the confines of her helmet. It seemed by far the most appealing solution. In her mind she pictured what he'd do or say at the moment of realisation of his immediate end, and she couldn't suppress a grin. It wasn't that she was cruel or merciless, or without feeling or appreciation of life - but the situation irked her, he was a problem, and it wasn't like she didn't already have enough of those. So if she wanted to spend time pretending, then she'd do that, and if what she was pretending to do seemed to hold something funny inspite of its seriousness then she'd bloody well grin. 'Not like anyone can see it anyway if I grin or not...'

But the grin died on her face the moment she set eyes on her prisoner again. Reflexes took over. She swore, and ducked behind a crate beside the entrance to the cargo hold, her blaster already drawn and aiming. Osik, where was she supposed to aim at? The prisoner was someone else entirely so where was the original? Where was he hiding? How had he got out of the cage? And who was sitting in that cage? How had he got onto her ship? With her helmet she scanned the interior of the hold but it couldn't detect any other life forms. But that didn't mean anything.

"Shab!" she swore again, hoping for something to happen.