Chapter Text
The pod decelerated at a rate that made the crash harness dig painfully deep into Ashkhen’s shoulders. Still a preferable alternative to having the armrest of the opposite seat dig painfully deep into her face, had she gone without fastening the straps.
You can’t be serious!
Through the viewport, Taris’s curvature stopped expanding. Ashkhen glanced at the altitude meter on the piloting station—her inner ear confirmed that the tug of war between planet’s gravity field and a tractor beam was over. Taris had lost. The pod made a slow half-turn, bringing a Kazellis-class light freighter into view.
“Leave me the kriff alone!” Ashkhen shouted and flailed at her captor, in vain. The mercenary never bothered to open comm channels between the spacecrafts.
The freighter lowered its loading ramp like a sando aqua monster ready to swallow its prey. Ashkhen unclipped the crash harness, and, ignoring the warning chime, pushed herself out of the seat. Neither her stomach nor her nerves agreed with free fall.
She frantically opened every storage compartment along the pod’s walls to find anything remotely resembling a weapon. The best she could find was a few cases of field rations. Fat chance of the merc being so gluten intolerant that smearing it in his face would TKO him.
The freighter’s artificial gravity gave up and down back their meanings. Magnetic clamps secured the pod to the flooring of the ship’s cargo bay. Ashkhen flung the duraplast box aside, and planted her feet in an unarmed fighting stance.
Danger rang through the Force. A hungry, gleeful menace materialized from hyperspace, and the force of the sudden collision threw her back into a crash seat—a painful and dizzying reminder why passengers of all classes of spacecrafts were expected to keep their asses buckled in until the vessel had come to a complete stop.
Not five minutes passed before the tip of a plasma torch thrust through the pod’s door, which either meant (a) the boarders were a highly curious bunch, (b) they were actively looking for something, or (c) they were so numerous that scouring the mercenary’s entire ship took them less than five minutes.
She was pulled from the pod by highly curious pirates who immediately relieved her of her belt pouch and jacket, turning out its pockets. As she was hauled towards whoever looked like the captain, Ashkhen did a quick headcount. It was fairly safe to assume that the pirates themselves couldn’t count that high.
••• ••• •••
Ashkhen looked on as the pirates methodically beat the shit out of the mercenary with oddly conflicting emotions. It hadn’t been that long since she was in that same position, which earned him a bit of compassionate pity—on the other hand, she was weirdly grateful that the pirates found him more threatening so that they would start with him.
There’s always a bigger fish, huh.
Having been strung up by the wrists on a storage rack offered an excellent vantage point to take in the proceedings and strategize accordingly. Thirty-eight against one—tough odds to beat, as the telltale thuds and thumps of boots making contact with sentient mass lying on the floor accentuated. Ashkhen wisely refrained from drawing attention to herself by untwisting the bog of wires around her wrists with the Force, and settled in for quiet observation.
Mandalorian bounty hunters, a shipjacker and now pirates. A Hutt and a Zygerrian slaver is all I’m missing from the kriffing Outer Rim Big Five.
The gang retreated a few steps, leaving the bloodied mercenary on the ground. Ashkhen glimpsed a messy mop of dark brown hair. As far as she could tell, he was still breathing.
The pirate captain of the bulk freighter approached with leisurely steps, hands resting on his hips. A wide assortment of precious metals dazzled in his grin. Ashkhen swallowed hard.
Grim endings began with a young woman tied up and thirty-eight men in a closed space.
“Now, to more pleasant pastimes, shall we?”
The pirate closed the remaining distance and stood face-to-face with Ashkhen, softly chuckling to himself. His breath must have been what Nautolan parents used to scare their kids into diligently brushing teeth.
“Wonder what’s your worth.”
“I somehow get the feeling that you’re not asking that in the philosophical sense.”
The backhand left Ashkhen seeing stars. In a few blinks, the double outlines of the man in front merged back into one image.
“I’ve robbed, screwed, sold and killed a whole lotta yous, but never seen a colorless one. What kind of pool float are you s’posed to be?”
The captain half-circled around her and stood uncomfortably close behind. Something pressed against her spine, travelled down her back, then stopped with a snort from the captain.
“Not a runaway slave. So”—his palms on her hips made Ashkhen’s toes curl inside her boots—“not you is what’s valuable, but something you have, maybe?”
The captain’s paws pushed deep into her pockets—bastard had the nerve to pinch the few credits she had left. Rough hands kneaded muscle in a way that made Ashkhen squirm, involuntary and undignified. His right hand worked its way down her leg and pulled free the folding knife she kept tucked in her right boot. Ashkhen wasn’t thrilled. When he completed the circle and stood in front again, the blade entered the conversation at eye-level, bringing her attention to the fact that she was now one smart-ass remark away from getting a badly scratched cornea.
The captain picked what looked like raw meat from his grills, and flicked it off Ashkhen’s blade.
“Now, our friend here”—he jerked his head towards the motionless heap on the floor—“is a sector-renowned treasure hunter. Artwork, precious trinkets, jewels… for customers with a lot of money. We know he was to intercept a transfer of kyber crystals. He wouldn’t say anything, and now he won’t be able to say anything for a while. Do you happen to know what happened to those crystals?”
“For real though.” Despite the situation, Ashkhen’s mouth quirked upwards. “Do you think anyone would actually answer that question and tell you the truth?”
One step, two steps, the captain backed up three paces and gave an up nod. The air cracked twice. A diagonal line of searing agony cut across Ashkhen’s back from waist to shoulder blade. The second strike snapped at the base of her spine. The impact bent her back into a painful arch, muscles clenched at the electric jolt, breath caught in her throat, neither an inward hiss nor a cry of pain.
“Oh, everyone,” the voice came from behind.
A hand fisted in the back of Ashkhen’s shirt, cold, metallic fingers chafing against the angry welt beneath. Ashkhen was wrenched to the side. She now hung face to face with the new player, a man with cybernetic augments so outlandish that his species was impossible to guess.
“Hurts like a mother, aye? Master-at-Arms Dirge, at your service.” He tipped the handle of his electrowhip to his temple. “It goes like this: Cap’n asks, you answer. Words or screams of gibberish, is up to you.” His hand twisted, stretching the fabric, as he slowly turned Ashkhen back to face the captain. “Clothes come off before the third strike.”
The captain looked on, thoughtful, as the captive tamed her wheezing with deliberate breaths.
“If you don’t have anything to do with the crystals, then why was he after you?” The captain’s eyes flickered to the side, looking past Ashkhen. “Oh. Dirge is doing his warm-ups.”
“S-s-secret powers!” Ashkhen blurted out. “I have secret powers. F-for real. I’m… I’m an angel from Iego.”
Stinging, contemptuous laughter reverberated through the cargo hold, pirates slapped their knees and wiped at their eyes. The captain held his sides and howled.
“The kriff you are! Angels are s’posed to be beautiful. You’re just a gillhead hussy who’s gotten stuck in the washing machine.”
And you look like your ancestors thought interspecies rape was a solid substitute for family planning!
“I’m not kidding!” Ashkhen honed her focus on the captain. “How about this: let me walk, and in return, I’ll bless your crew so that none of you’ll ever get hit by a blaster bolt again.”
The captain looked her up and down, mouth pulling into a doubtful smirk. Ashkhen infused her words with just a hint of Force Persuasion.
“Try me, what have you got to lose?”
The blade clattered away on the hangar bay floor, his blaster appeared in his hand. Ashkhen briefly wondered how long of a stay in the Outer Rim made one inured to being held at gunpoint.
“You do the thing. I’ll test it by shooting one of my men. If he dies, I’ll douse you in kessoline, set you on fire, then throw you out the airlock.”
“No pressure, huh?” Ashkhen said to the blaster in her face. “This all of you?”
The pirate captain beckoned to one of his men. A stocky Shistavanen, half his face covered in black fur, the other half badly burned, hopped forward.
“Tell Raava and the rest to get their asses in here,” the captain ordered him. “Tell them Toady here says she’s gonna blow all of us.”
“Bless!” Ashkhen protested.
“What I said.”
In a few minutes, four additional pirates appeared in the cargo bay and ambled past Ashkhen, none of whom smelled like they just had been disturbed mid-showering.
“Okay, here’s how this works,“ Ashkhen addressed the crowd, noting the position of each member. “Stand a little closer to each other, so I can, uh, wrap my protective spells around you. You can hold hands if you’d—”
“I ain’t no kriffing faggot!” someone yelled from the crew.
In a crew of forty-two men? You’re almost statistically loud about that.
The captain spun around, blaster charging. One long stare later, the mumbled curses abated. The captain holstered his blaster and grabbed the hand of his first mate. Despite fire burning in her shoulders from the strain, Ashkhen barely suppressed a grin. Pirates had more superstitions between them than brain cells.
“Close your eyes and take a deep, deep breath…”
Ashkhen felt like an absolute kriffing asshole for switching off the cargo bay’s magnetic shield with the Force, but only for a moment. The escaping air blasted the pirates out through the opening; the sudden forward swing broke her right wrist, but the wires held.
A signal rang through the Force; cautioning, constraining, commanding. The Force was mercy and the Force was great.
Ashkhen, dangling by her broken wrist, did as she was prompted without a thought. The mercenary’s inert form stopped picking up speed towards the hangar opening, slammed sideways into a latched down crate, then the blast doors slid into place. Only the silence and the cold remained.
••• ••• •••
It took the mercenary a solid hour to finally give a sign of life.
By then, Ashkhen’s right hand had swollen to twice its size; her shoulders, back and ribcage were one throbbing protest of agony. Red and white blotted out the edge of her vision. Various items were strewn on the floor around her, paraphernalia she had levitated closer in an attempt to hack at the Sith-forsaken wires, but none worked.
The mercenary sat up, looking at the blast shields, then turned his head towards Ashkhen. Eight bone-white horns crowned his head; his facial tattoos told stories of his heritage in a language Ashkhen didn’t understand. She gave a very rough estimate of a ten-ish year age gap—having seen the way he moved on the Valiance and now seeing his face without the helmet, there was a bit of a discrepancy. Or, maybe it was just that life had used him hard.
The Iridonian’s eyes shifted to her hands tied above her head.
“Dude, listen, I know this is all kriffed up, but hear me out, okay?” Ashkhen’s voice cracked. The strain on her arms had grown unbearable, she started to have trouble breathing. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but this could be the perfect opportunity for both of us to become the bigger person, like, maybe you could help—“
“Pirates went woosh?”
“Y-yeah, wasn’t that the most serendipitous shield malfunction in the history of badly maintained junk haulers!”
Pain had overtaken Ashkhen’s mind. She barely registered the Iridonian slowly getting to his feet. As he walked over, a serrated blade slid out from behind his back.
“My stones must be in your small intestines by now.” He lifted Ashkhen’s shirt to expose her lower ribcage and frowned as though he was trying to orient himself on an offline map. “You don’t have a belly button?”
“The kriff would I have one for!?” Ashkhen squeezed her eyes shut, but the pain wouldn’t go away, the Iridonian wouldn’t go away, the absurdity wouldn’t go away. “Don’t they teach you about that stuff in sch—”
The ice cold touch of the blade erased the rest of her rhetoric in an instant.
A wave of panic, hurt and anger erupted from within and undid the barriers of caution instilled by years of training. The singular notion of refusal took over. Ashkhen refused to die such a stupid death, tied to a support beam, on an abandoned pirate ship adrift in space.
Metal creaked and split. Refusal exploded from within, an uncontrollable blast of energy that hit the mercenary square in the chest. Bloodshot eyes rolled back into his head, then he toppled over with a spasm.
••• ••• •••
“You didn’t kill me when you had the chance.”
The Iridonian’s voice brought Ashkhen back from the light trance. His intonation fell somewhere between dubiety and reproach.
“No,” Ashkhen said, eyes still closed. “I chose to rescue you, Surot G. Uysal.”
The sound of his name compelled the Iridonian to push himself into a seated position. His eyes flickered to the side to look past her, where the storage rack beam lay on the floor behind her, wrenched from its mounts by a force that seemed wildly disproportionate to the small figure who had been hanging from it.
“Ah, so it was your own prescription,” Ashkhen continued, holding up a small white canister of nasal spray. “On a side note, you’re the first person I’ve met who’s sniffing downers for their intended purpose.”
“You went through my pockets?”
“Minutes passed by and you wouldn’t come out of it.” Ashkhen gently cradled her right hand, wondering if her numb fingers would ever come back to life, or she would lose both hands before turning twenty-five. “This happens to you often? Grand mal?”
A twitch. A hard stare. Anger and… shame? A moment stretched to eternity.
“It’s under control.”
Ashkhen’s gaze shifted to the small heap of weapons she had taken off the mercenary and placed well out of his reach. ”Given how banged up both of us are, what do you say we call a truce?”
The Iridonian’s mouth moved in a way that suggested he was counting teeth with his tongue. “Two days.”
Ashkhen shot him a quizzical look.
“That’s how long I’m willing to watch you shit in a sieve as a token of appreciation.”
Offering her right hand to shake on it with a broken wrist was out of the question, Ashkhen settled for a nod in acknowledgement. “Okay, then… What’s next?”
“Laxatives.” The mercenary limped over to his weapons and rearmed himself with slow and cautious movements, missing Ashkhen’s eye twitch.
“I meant more in the general sense,” she said.
“Find my astromech. See what can be scavenged from this freighter. Hit the market, monetize. Then once I have my crystals back”—he stared pointedly at Ashkhen’s midsection—“continue with the original assignment.” He raised his wrist comm to his mouth. “V6, you there?”
Silence. Static, then silence again.
“V6, come in!”
Nothing. The Iridonian turned away from Ashkhen, movements stiff and ginger, heading for his freighter. “His locator says he’s somewhere around. Let’s scour the cargo hold first. Look for V-series pilot droid.”
Ashkhen sat cross legged on the floor. She could feel the bones shift and crunch in her broken wrist, making her a little lightheaded. Standing was not an option at the moment. The more she considered pushing it, the more defined that warm buzz at the base of her skull became, the kind one usually felt immediately before fainting.
“Hey, uh… Surot?”
The Iridonian half turned. His glare had Ashkhen reiterate in a haste. “Mr. Uysal, do you have a first aid kit on your ship, by any chance?”
“Surot’s fine.” He reached into a pouch on his belt and threw Ashkhen a small canister. “Stimpak. Press and inhale, don’t swallow the whole device.”
Ashkhen opened her mouth in protest, but the tiny thrum of humour she sensed around him stunned her into confused silence.
They found V6 in a corner, lying on its side, deactivated. Surot tipped him right side up then switched him on.
“System reboot. Run a full diagnostic.” In a few moments, the LEDs’ erratic blinking tamed into a steady rhythm. “You okay, buddy?”
The droid rotated its head back and forth a few degrees, expressing his complaints in a few beeps.
“You and me both,” Surot said. He pried the restraining bolt off him. “How oldschool.”
V6 shot past his master, rolling one of his treads over his feet. He stopped in front of Ashkhen and summarized his questions in two inquisitive chirps.
“For a little while,” Surot answered for her. “She ate the consignment.”
V6’s buzz saw extracted without a moment’s delay. Ashkhen took a step back, flattening against the inner bulkhead.
“Saws off, buddy. We’ll let them find their own way out.”
V6’s extensions promptly folded back into their sockets, and the astromech left the pair of them with a short string of beeps, unloading his opinion upon them.
“When was his last, uh… memory wipe?” Ashkhen ventured.
Surot passed her and headed after his droid. “Never.”
They followed V6 onto the bridge. A ship this size and completely devoid of life gave Ashkhen the chills—the emptiness of space through the viewport felt like a bad omen.
V6’s scomp link plugged into a computer terminal. A dim flicker of light waved across the control panel as the droid brought back the systems online one after the other. Aurebesh lettering appeared on a small screen to their left.
‘LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS: SATISFACTORY. OUTER HULL: MOSTLY INTACT. HYPERDRIVE: MAINTENANCE LONG OVERDUE.’
“As expected from a junkhauler operated by a bunch of clowns,” Ashkhen said.
Surot stepped in front of the old school, wall-mounted navicomp. “What are our options?”
‘A LIST OF POTENTIAL DESTINATIONS ACCOUNTING FOR REMAINING FUEL AND THE STATE OF THE HYPERDRIVE.’
Systems and planets started scrolling on the screen. Ashkhen tiptoed behind him and peeked over his shoulder to keep herself in the loop—Surot didn’t read like the type for extensive mutual insight check-ins before deciding on an itinerary. At least the list of more than one option helped her to gain back a bit of enthusiasm.
Surot’s pensive chin-stroking didn’t last long. “Set a course for Er’Kit.” With that, he turned on his heel and headed back towards the belly of the ship. “Follow me,” he said when he noticed Ashkhen was still standing by the navicomp.
Ashkhen shot a doubtful glance back at V6. “You’re not gonna…?”
“V6 is a pilot droid. I trust him with piloting. You, I don’t trust enough to let out of my sight.”
He paused for a moment to decipher the chipped paint scripts on the wall, written in Sy Bisti, then started down the corridor. As they reached a turbolift, Ashkhen’s steps momentarily faltered. Her hesitation didn’t get past Surot.
“Don’t like getting in elevators with strangers?” He leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
“Exchanging names won’t alter the possib”—Ashkhen’s eyes narrowed—“probability of you pulling a knife on me again in close quarters.”
“There was no exchange,” Surot pointed out. “You decided it was to be one sided.”
Ashkhen hesitated. Surot had a weird aura about him, more disorganized than purposely intimidating. And he did kind of have a point.
“It’s Sev.”
The elevator announced its arrival with a ding. Surot shrugged himself off the wall.
“I’ll call you that then.”
A short ascension later, Surot headed towards the only door that looked like it could lead to the captain’s room and frowned at the access panel. He typed in 1-2-3-4, but the keypad denied him access in two red blinks. By the time the third would have followed, Surot’s knife was hilt deep in the access panel. At a twist of his wrist, the door sheathed open with a forbidding croak.
“That’s one way to override a locking mechanism,” Ashkhen muttered.
“Don’t have the time to try over six thousand combinations.” Surot patted the durasteel doorframe as he entered. “Neither do you look like you could have forced it open.”
Ashkhen remained very silent.
••• ••• •••
In the following two days, Ashkhen made herself useful by helping Surot to sort loot. It was all a careful choreography of neither getting in his way too much nor raising his suspicion by trying to hide away on the pirate ship; a cautious consideration of whether pinching an easy-to-conceal blaster from the stack would put her mind more at ease, or would develop into a self-realizing paranoia around the mercenary.
In those two days, Ashkhen learned a lot about firearms ranging from holdout blasters to grenade launchers and learned nearly nothing about Surot, other than that he knew a lot about weapons, and cared very little about privacy.