Do You Have a Flag: Sugar, Spice, Everything Not-So-Nice

[Sanis Prent]

I just wanted a few minutes of peace. Maybe I'd be good for round three. Maybe I'd catch a sauna or a massage. But right now, I just wanted my drink while it was still cold.

"Suu'la eia nelaanti jirra, gai?"

A popular request for a human guy, I'd found out long ago. Short girl, spotted skin, and a big wild mane of curly brunette hair waded over to me to clink her glass against mine. She smiled expectantly, licking the space between her left index finger and thumb in the contingency that I was on the other side of the language barrier, which I wasn't.

In the land of rough-tongued felinoids, the human with the smooth one was king. Or at least bottom bitch. At any rate I wasn't quite captain of the swim team, and a bit of g'day down under probably required small details like lung capacity.

"Wau'e laa kanee na su'saa." Some other time, perhaps.

Just then, I spotted a tall blast from my past.

"Karabast, this is one small galaxy!"

[Morgan Evanar]

"Well, it's been a few years." Morgan said, a little distant, his mind recalled some very rough times they had shared and not much good since.

"How you doin'?" He grinned and asked, mostly ignoring the Naala'in colored passenger on his shoulders, filled with conquest afterglow. She absentmindedly stroked Morgan's short hair.

[Sanis Prent]

"A little better since last our paths crossed."

To put it lightly. And yet, maybe not the whole of it. Fancy duds, new ship, and the closest thing to stable employment I'd ever held down in my life. But I'd traded in a lot of good people in exchange for that. Cirrsseeto. Loklorien. Morgan Evanar was also good people. He was a Jedi, so that set him back a few steps, but he'd always been a pretty no-bullshit sort of Jedi, and I appreciated that. Then there was the whole saving my life bit. It helped to salvage what had otherwise been a bad day several years ago.

I gestured with my nearly-empty cocktail to the piece of ass hanging near him, who was still marginally interested in a round two, but becoming less and less interested in the conversation.

"I see you're still observing all the time-honored monastic traditions of the Jedi."

[Morgan Evanar]

"You know me, ever the staunch traditionalist." That earned a quick chuckle.

"Humph." Morgan's passenger was getting bored. He twisted and reached up, securing the Cizerack as she rotated off of his shoulders. Disappointed was what her face said, and she slapped Morgan on his ass as she left. He looked over his shoulder and she gave him a wink.

"They're a lot friendlier when they're not military." Morgan remarked.

"Amen." Sanis raised his glass to that. "What brings you out to Jovan?"

"I was going to ask you the same, but I'm trying to get to Jabiim." Unless you were a Clone Wars scholar or a rare minerals trader, one wouldn't have heard of Jabiim. Sanis knew lots of interesting people and had brushed against interesting knowledge, so it was possible he'd heard of the planet.

[Sanis Prent]

"Jabiim?"

Now fully abandoned by my casual playmate, I could talk a bit of shop without (admittedly fantastic) distractions.

"Never been myself, but I've hustled my fair share of prospectors. A sector out of Boonta, on the border of the Hutt badlands. The hell you want with a place like that?"

With the Jedi, who knew. The place had been kicked around by the army of the republic and the confederates during the clone wars, though that was beyond ancient history. Then again, I didn't peg Morgan Evanar as the mining sort of guy.

[Morgan Evanar]

If it were some random spacer, he'd probably be less than truthful. Morgan liked Sanis, despite the fact that he probably wasn't on the level with everyone else, their relationship had been consistently truthful thus far.

"I think someone is trying to frame Jedi. Some of the evidence for it might be on Jabiim. Probably. I dunno, the Force isn't exactly the most forthcoming for me, but I've got a general feeling, and the logic pieces fit pretty well." Morgan shrugged to stop himself from rambling.

"Madame Maillanaarro suggested you might have a ship, or access to one."

[Sanis Prent]

"I do, yeah."

I waded to the steps of the pool, then climbed out. A pool boy was ready with a towel, which I took to wrap around my middle.

"Not as nice as the last one, but she's got it where it counts like always."

Me and Morgan had good history, but he'd grown up in the school of hard knocks like I had. Unlike the Jedi Order, I didn't run a charity ward.

"You didn't leave your credit pouch in your other robes, did you? There's not much money in that galactic armpit, and a bit of risk. Figure about five thousand worth of risk, give or take whether it's just hutt problems out there or the lightsabery kind."

[Morgan Evanar]

"More of a jacket guy, myself, so I've got the creds." The less the Alliance's paw prints were on things the less attention it would get. "Lucky" stock market movement had made Morgan a man of means who didn't really spend much of it. He'd ask to get reimbursed for some of it later.

Morgan followed Sanis out and wiped himself down before securing the towel around his waist.

Sanis seemed to have lost his... do the right thing streak? Losing the Layla had hit him hard. He'd even run from his best friend, sort of. Sanis could have found a role in the Alliance if he'd wanted it, but he... reverted? Was a correct assessment?

"Should be a milk run, but tell you what. I'll give you 4k on boarding and if nothing happens after we jump out, we're square. If shit goes down I pay 1500, so you end up with 5500." A bit of Nar Shadda slipped into accent and pace of speech. Fair's fair, right?

[Sanis Prent]

I said nothing at first, but the smirk on my face was about as binding as a signature on a contract.

"You've got yourself a round trip to Jabiim, sounds like. My ship's in bay G-4. Meet there in, say, an hour?"

I didn't want to sell my eagerness, but even with the risk and relatively low reward, this little blue milk detour seemed like stepping back in to the old life. Maybe I hadn't quite severed as cleanly as I thought. Maybe Cirrsseeto was more right about me than I dared admit.