Smuggler Archive

It looks like the editor is going to hose up the formatting again, but I think it's legible. I have to weigh reformatting it against the amount of time left in my shift and the fact that it's 4AM here, and I'd probably ruin the whole thing messing with it.
As to reposting the story without the comments... maybe when I finish it. Not now though. I like the feedback I get, because it's good to hear that people are reading and enjoying it. Besides, if the comments weren't there to remind you it's being written in installments, you'd see how choppy the storyline is.
I hope you like this episode, I hadn't planned to break it down this way before, but as I said, once I got to writing some of the stuff in dialog, I realized I'd have another gigantic story, or could do a medium sized one and keep it pretty focused.
Let me know what you think.

Dallet 2.10

Group Effort

Hyperspace

I used to have an apartment, back on Corellia. Back then, at least a lifetime ago, I thought of it as pitifully small. There were some compelling reasons to have a small place, back then. A small place could be easily overlooked. A small place was easier to justify on the real-property indices than a palatial mansion - should anyone official ask me where my credits came from. A small place could be packed and moved in a morning, or more precisely a small place could be hastily abandoned in the early hours of morning, minutes before CorSec arrived because one of your clients rolled over and turned you in to shorten his sentence.

I used to have parties at my small place, the kind of party where the guests pretended to be enlightened drug users, comfortable with their addictions. They were only shocked by the users who were one drug ahead of them. Those kind of falsely-highbrow evenings usually devolved (by design, of course) into a kind of dazed, drunken auction whereby I'd sell drugs to my host of witty 'friends', making back any losses I'd accumulated by setting a buffet of vices before them earlier in the evening. I made it a point to let the faithful buyers know that I cheated the new folks, to be able to give my cronies sweet deals, because hey, we're partners on this journey of enlightenment and experimentation together. I gave them all the same deal, but the hard core addicts really needed to believe that the were properly managing themselves, so it wasn't even a difficult con to pull off.

I liked it best when these parties followed a relatively predictable course, travelling blissfully through the evening into the predawn hours like some quaint pleasure-barge slipping gently through the night sky. Except that my revelers carried a host of pharmacological issues; side-effects, interactions, adverse reactions, alien biochemistries, and lethal allergies. My only sober guest was a doctor moonlighting as my consultant. My revelers also carried guns, lots of guns. They had hold-out blasters, they had one-shot zipguns, maybe a cryoban grenade, sometimes they had worse. A Wookiee, as I remember, had most of a bowcaster broken down into pieces for quick assembly, and hidden on his person. Invariably someone’s posturing would lead to tension, and if it couldn't be handled with a quick touch of H4b, tension sometimes lead to gunfire, or melee, and these things upset my trade. I made it a point to bring my wares out in waves, first the calming, sedating type, then the altered states stuff, then finally the pep-up stuff, as the night wore down. While my brilliant guests were properly intoxicated and mollified, I'd work the party gently away from whatever distraction (and believe me, sometimes my distractions were damnably distracting) and towards a mindset that promoted sales of my product. To do so, I'd move them from my meager living room, to my (relatively) roomy kitchen. It seemed that no matter how I tried to alter the course of things, the kitchen was a druggie magnet, and pulling them away from a comfortable place where the food was kept to something a little darker and more conducive to other pursuits was like trying to teach a Bantha to navigate a docking umbilical. Once I attempted to persuade one of my distractions, a perky young dancing girl, to forego the kitchen for my lushly accommodated bedroom (where, I promised, I kept the 'good stuff'). I didn't fail utterly, but I never got her to 'the good stuff'. I did manage to pay her in drugs though, and I never looked at my countertop without cracking a conceited grin after that evening.

All that was before my luck went south, and I had to ditch the concept of doing business in a fixed location. But that was a long time ago, and the small apartment with all my crazed addict clients seemed almost like a fond memory. The kitchen concept still held true though; there's always some place that's the preferred gathering spot.

Now I was stuck in a ship so small that it could have fit inside my old apartment. It consisted of a 'hold' not large enough to hold anything more than a fancy title, an engineering space (read closet), a gangway, a bed, a fresher (that was about as 'fresh' as last week’s corpse-slime), a makeshift droid interface, and the cockpit. As captain, I claimed the cockpit for myself. I would brook no argument from Fiti, not even when she threatened me with court-martial, nor would any forbidding scowl from Kah soften my resolve. I'd slept in it before, and I didn't mind sleeping in it now. I didn’t really mind the faint smell of vomit that we hadn’t been able to eradicate from the ship. I did mind that the most exercise I could get was the four steps back to the 'hold'. The 'Knob wasn't meant for long hauls, and it wasn't meant for multiple occupants. I thought that if the haul went much longer, I'd kill and eat Fiti to alleviate some of the tension, but Kah considered it a breach of military courtesy. He also confided to me that humans usually tasted like they smelled, which was far from savory. I was about to open my mouth to ask him how in the hell he'd know that, when he fixed me with a flat glare that made me reconsider. I've said it before, I'll say it again. His sense of humor is so dry sometimes that it borders on absurdity. When it’s not absurd, it’s unsettling.

"What was that you did, back in Buzzard?" I asked, trying to turn the conversation away from the consumption of humans.

"What do you mean, Dallet-cha? We did many things in Buzzard."

"I mean at the infirmary. I’ve seen you fight two guys at once, but that was different. It was like you were fighting two fights at once, one for each hand."

"In a way, Dallet-cha, I was. I have taught you that nothing should divide your focus while you fight, but sometimes this rule must be broken. It is dangerous." He paused, considering his words. "It is always dangerous to give anything less than complete commitment to an opponent. This is why I stress perfection of form. When perfect form is achieved, it becomes the burden of each enemy to defeat the form’s design, as well as your capacity."

"Come again?" He’d lost me there.

"Speed alone will not grant victory, nor will strength. Nor even will perfection of form. But when combined, the form will leave you in such a strong position that your opponent must overcome the nature of the form before he may pose a threat."

"Right Kah, I get it. You’re saying that if I do things right, I stack the deck in my favor."

"Just so. But this is sometimes not enough. When two fight who have mastered the forms, their benefit is lost to each. When many assailants attack, no form can grant perfect defense, no matter how perfectly executed."

"Alright. That’s why I keep a blaster handy." I chuckled. He ignored my attempt at levity. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to disrupt him when he’s talking about his art.

"When the opponents are many, there is another way. It is risky."

"And that’s what you did at the infirmary? It seemed to work out pretty good for you, and pretty bad for them."

"They were not trained, they did not attack in unison. The Mirrored Way would not work if they had known what they were doing." He shook his head ruefully, I could hear the faint his off scales sliding over one another. "It is a risky thing, but sometimes it works. If either man had stepped back, I would have been finished. They met my aggression with their own, and they were overconfident."

"Could you teach me that? Might come in handy."

"It took me thirty standard years to become proficient in the technique."

"Damn."

"I do not think we have the time to make you a Master of the Steel Hands, Dallet-cha."

"I don’t either, Master Kah, " I said, without having to fake a bit of reverence even. "But I don’t think it could hurt to train some more. When we hit dirt again."

"I disagree, Dallet-cha."

"Huh?"

"You are not training to be a Master of the Path. You are training to be a Jedi. These are not the same."

"So? Still can’t hurt." What, was good old Kah getting tired of me already?

"There come a point in your training when you must become dedicated one way or the other. After that point, turning back will yield only partial successes."

"You’re talking about specialization. I don’t think I’m there yet."

"No, you are not. But I fear that if you become more Teras Kasi, you will become less Jedi."

"I’m still not sure I follow you. Are you saying you’re not going to be my teacher anymore?"

"No. We will continue to perfect what you have learned, but we will not begin the advanced techniques."

"Ah, ok? When did you decide this?"

"After the infirmary. I strongly felt that I might die there."

"You were afraid?"

"Yes, Dallet-cha. I was afraid that I would die having given you half of an education that would leave you pointed in the wrong direction. My order itself will likely die with me, I would not have the Jedi order die as well."

"Kah, I still don’t understand you."

His brow furrowed, which was a spooky event to witness on a lizard.

"Dallet, consider your droid. It was originally designed to be a navicomputer. It was not equipped with personality or mobility programming."

"Kah, the droid’s a friggin’ nutcase, I don’t think he’s a good comparison to-"

"The droid is trying to change what it is," he interrupted, "from navigator to something different, something more interactive and sentient. It has turned back from a terminal evolution, and in trying to become like a living thing, it is neither navicomputer nor interactive droid; it is both things, but badly."

"So you’re saying that a good Teras Kasi would make a bad Jedi."

"So I have been told," he said laying one of his massive clawed hands on my shoulder. "It is my firm belief that you would have made an excellent Teras Kasi, and it is my hope that you will become a great Jedi."

"Thanks." The sting of knowing my fate was changing was almost ameliorated by the compliment. Kah didn’t place compliments lightly. He wasn’t the kind of guy that followed it up with mushy doubletalk either, so we just sat there for a while.

"Look Lieutenant, it’s not safe to pull a ship out of hyperspace before it’s gone to its projected debark point. They still teach that at the academy, right?" Fiti was still getting on my nerves, and when it was Kah’s turn to sleep in the bed, she liked to come ‘up front’ to the kitchen and argue with me.

"Private-"

"Captain, till we make landfall." I knew I’d pay for it when we hit the dirt, but she was getting on my nerves.

"Captain Greenstar, " and believe me, you could hear the sneer, "we have to get out of hyperspace to communicate with Command. We might already have missed the rendezvous window."

"I know, but if we drop too early, we’re going to be splattered all over the inside of your rendezvous window." I wondered how far Captain’s prerogative would get me. It kept my in my cushy chair, but that’s about all I’d been able to wrangle so far.

Hyperspace is not like normal space. Normal space is big and empty, dusted with vanishingly small bodies we call stars and planets. Normal space is huge and dark and beautiful, and even though it has tried to kill me several times, I still love it. Hyperspace is insane. Hyperspace is like the condensed version of everywhere. Points in hyperspace correspond vaguely to points in real space, but the magnitudes never worked out right. "Vectors work fine, " an instructor had once explained to us, "in terms of direction. But the scales are not consistent." A rare master of understatement, that instructor. To our knowledge things do not exist permanently in hyperspace, but their effects do. The mass of planets and stars can still pull against a ship, fields can still change velocities, or relative velocities, as it were. Droids are good at hyperspace, because they’re not troubled by the apparently inconsistent physics of the place. To me though (and most organic sentience), planning to drop out of hyperspace abnormally is a bit like playing Rodian Roulette with a grenade - much more fun for the spectators than the participants.

"NC, please tell the Lieutenant how long till we hit the drop margin?" I asked, condescendingly. There was a long pause. I considered phrasing my question again less like a question, and more like a command.

"I’m sorry Captain, but I do not feel that a ‘friggin’ nutcase’ like myself should be responsible for hyperspace navigation." The voice came out tinny over the speakers, and when I looked back to the droid in its harness, its head turned away from me. "I am not certain that I can even manage to turn the interior lights on and off correctly," he muttered. I shot a look at Fiti, who gave me an arched eyebrow expression that said: Outstanding job you’re doing, as usual. Captain.

Great, I thought. I’m trapped in hyperspace with a compulsively militant woman, a giant (apparently man-eating) lizard martial artist, and a clingy passive-aggressive droid. Why would I ever need to use drugs? I considered dropping us catastrophically out of hyperspace anyway, because I had the vague notion that situations that weird don’t belong in realspace, and it might be my obligation to remedy such things. The notion passed.

"En-See, listen… I was joking."

"You were not joking, you and Kah consider me substandard and defective."

"No, no, he was making an analogy. He was saying you were a lot like me. We’re alike, and we can’t get too specialized."

"Are you a ‘friggin nutcase’ Captain?" NC said, wounded.

"That's affirmative, droid." Fiti apparently thought the moment was humorous. She was having trouble containing herself. Leave it to a woman.

"Look NC, I’m sorry, I spoke without thinking. It won’t happen again." It sure won’t, I mused, because we are SO wiping your memory when we land. If we land.

"Captain, I don’t feel like you and Kah respect me. I want to be an equal member of the team."

"Um, sure." I gave it quick consideration. Was I speaking NC-code for: ‘it’s ok to flush the atmosphere’? "You’re on the team. Now how long till we drop?"

"I am on the team? I am a real member of the crew?" The droid turned back, now willing to look at me again. "No reprogramming? No threats of erasure?" While the droid was waxing friendly, Fiti snorted and went to the ‘fresher.

"Well, let’s not -" he turned away -"let’s not worry about that right now, ok?"

"Roger that, Dallet."

"Yeah. Er, roger that, NC, now how long-"

"Does that mean I get a share of anything we find? Do I get a portion of salvage claim?"

"NC, we’re a flying miracle of salvage already, I don’t think we’re going to be taking down any banking vessels or transgalactic casinos, do you?"

"The probability is small, sir. I simply thought that perhaps as a team member-" his chassis twitched nervously.

"Ok, ok. We’ll split everything evenly. You, me, and Kah."

"What about Lieutenant Pemwik?"

"C’mon buddy, she tried to blow us up." I spread my hands placatingly. Just like one of my enlightened consumers. Besides, I thought, nothing divided by three is the same as nothing divided by four.

"Roger that. Partner."

Pemwik re-emerged from the ‘fresher, her face grim.

"Funny you should mention that, " she said, holding out an armed grenade, "Remember this?" she asked.

"Sure do." I stared hard at her. Not the grenade trick, again.

"Drop us out. Now NC."

"Fiti, honey, did you honestly think I’d leave the charges in your grenades?"

She hefted it in her hand, realizing it was lighter than it should be. She fixed me with one of those looks. I swear she practices them.

She said something that even I wouldn't repeat, and tossed the grenade back into her gear bag.

"Found the one you stashed in the hold too, Lieutenant." I said smugly.

"Gotcha!" Said my new droid partner.

She must not have thought we were that clever, she spared us each one hand to flash us an obscene gesture. I suppose that doubled for a theatrical exit; there wasn’t anywhere to exit to.

(Later)

"So what’s your deal anyway, Pemwik?" I asked, when it looked like she was getting ready to go have another nap, and the jump was dragging on.

"What do you mean?" She was definitely ready for another nap, by her tone.

"I mean how come you’re in the Service?"

"I felt an obligation to help the-"

"Please, spare me. I know how peoples’ head work, and the only ones that really believe that ‘duty, honor, homeworld’ routine are barely smarter than the dro-" I lowered my voice quickly and looked around nervously, "they’re mentally deficient. You don’t strike me as mentally deficient."

"Maybe the whole galaxy isn’t driven by greed like you. Maybe some people actually believe what they fight for."

"Fine, what is it you fight for then?"

"Payback."

"See? I knew it was something like that." Smugness becomes me.

"Yeah? I’m sure you’ve got me all figured out."

"Maybe. Let me see if I can guess." How to give her my impression of a psychological workup without making her try to blow us up again…

"Let’s see, " I began. "One or both parents in the Service?"

"No." She didn’t sound like she wanted to play.

"Brother? Sister?"

"No. Forget it. I’m going to go lay down."

"Kah’s still asleep. No siblings then. Boyfriend. Boyfriend in the service. You were eighteen, joined up to be with him."

"No, now stop it." She almost caught hold of the Voice, but she wasn't quite angry enough to bring it off.

"No way, I’m close, I can tell. Maybe it’s bad though." I really couldn’t help myself; figuring people out is a hobby with me. Sometimes I don’t get it right away when other people don’t like to be figured out. "Not a boyfriend then… ex boyfriend? Boyfriend killed in the line of-"

"Husband, you ass." She paused. "My husband was in the Service. Congratulations."

Well, I thought. I can see I should shut up now. This is probably too painful for her to admit to. I didn’t though.

"Husband, you don’t look old enough to be married."

"You’re married when they put the ring on your bloody finger. You’re married if you’re married for ten minutes, or ten years. It’s not a death sentence."

"True. You must have been young though, I mean to be married already…" I was going to use my ‘gee, you can’t be but (insert a flatteringly low age here)’ routine, but I had an inkling that it wouldn’t impress her. I really should have just dropped it, but the woman knew everything about me from my records, and I knew almost nothing about her.

"I was, " she said, exasperated. "I was still seventeen when we got married. I was twenty when he died." I felt just the faintest tingling of regret from her, through the Force. The sensations came and went now, but they were always disconcerting when they came. The feeling intensified, as if to punish me for prodding her.

"How did he, I mean where did he die?"

"Just like a billion-and-one other people, he died on Alderaan." She sighed, and closed her eyes. The memory of it was raging through her, but she’d dealt with it a thousand times before. She had a routine, it felt like, and it didn’t take long for her to calm herself back down.

"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push."

"Yes you did, Dallet. And you still think you’ve got me all figured out."

"Well come on, it’s not a complicated thing. It’s terrible, but your husband died on Alderaan, no wonder you hate the Empire."

"Yeah, you’ve got me all pegged. My husband did die on Alderaan. I was laid up from a hoversledding accident. I broke my ankle on Ceneb-Six while we were vacationing. He was on leave. I couldn’t get bacta treatment, so I had to stay in the hospital." She opened her eyes back up, and stared right through me. "He went back to Alderaan to see our parents, and he took our daughter with him. I'm the only one left now." She paused, then finished. "Her name was Jerralla. She was almost two. My past, my present, and my future, all gone at once." She was turned away from me by the time she finished, refusing to meet my gaze the same way the droid had done a few hours before.

At last, I found the capacity to shut up.

"So that’s ‘my deal’."

I weighed my options, I considered the possibility that I could say something comforting or apologetic or even just vaguely humane, but I knew my chances of actually doing so with any class were basically nil. Sometimes, you just need to concede that you’re a bad person.

I locked myself in the ‘fresher and waited for her to switch with Kah.

There’s a mirror in the ‘fresher. There’s always one there, in every ‘fresher I’ve ever been in. I don’t know what species instituted the practice of depositing mirrors in that sort of place, and I’ve never been able to puzzle it out. As far as I can tell, of all the positions and activities you could possibly choose to observe yourself in, waste reclamation hardly seemed like the best candidate. Even standing there just waiting for her to go back to sleep, it seemed difficult to meet my own gaze.

I’d thought about putting mirrors on my ceiling back in the apartment, to observe myself in one of my favorite activities. It struck me as ironic that only a few years ago I’d have enjoyed watching myself partaking of any variety of depravities; but now that I was trying to be a better person, I couldn’t look myself in the eye.

It's because I’m trying too many things at once, I thought, looking for an excuse. Maybe Kah’s right, but maybe I was a’ terminally evolved’ amoral fraud, and now I’m a half-reformed con man.

When I got back, she was sitting in my chair. I thought I'd heard her walk back, but I must have imagined it. Having had a few minutes to compose myself, I thought it best to produce at least an imitation of an apology.

"Fiti, listen, I'm sorry about that-"

"You know, Private, you talk in your sleep." She was more aloof than before, and colder too. It was like her previous story had taken all of the heat out of her.

"What do I say?"

"Usually it's grunts and stuff, but sometimes you talk about a girl. Metra, Veetra, something like that."

"Yeah, Petra. She's someone I knew."

"Hooker?" She probably thought to goad me.

"Maybe. Probably. Wasn't how I knew her though." Hell, I'd known plenty of hookers. No reason to balk at admitting it now. I figured that she'd probably take an angle where she compared what she was fighting for, a dead husband and child, to what I was fighting for, a crazy sometimes-hooker. I hardened myself to the words I knew were coming.

"Did you love her?" Leave it to Pemwik to change angles. She stared hard at me. Must have been a real question. Her eyes were crystalline.

"Maybe. Probably."

"She love you?"

"Emperor's Balls, I hope not."

"Why not? She not good enough for you? She got a checkered past?"

"It's not like that. It's not like that at all."

"Then what is it like?"

I looked into her hard eyes, and I'll be damned, but I told her. I told her everything. It was her stare that convinced me. Maybe it was me feeling sorry for myself, for everyone thinking about what a bad guy I was, when they had no idea how bad it could really have been.

I told her about trying to steal the High Tide, and Spatka, and getting cooked around Dallet. I told her about how Petra nursed me back to health, and spaced my drugs. I told her about our time on Tatooine, and Petra's insane quest to become a Jedi. I told her about days and weeks of relative peace and relaxation. I told her about Spakta's brutality, and how he stole Petra from me. I told her everything, even about how I watched him burn up in reentry. Her eyes. I don't know why, either. I was nobody to her, she wasn't anybody to me except another woman in the long list of women I've offended. But they way she looked at me, it was like she envied me, and hated me, and pitied me all at the same time.

"So where is she now? What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I wish I did."

"You going to hang her out to twist in the wind?"

"I said I don’t know. She hates me now. She wants to kill me. She thinks I did this to her."

"You did."

"I might be a heel, but I can’t torture someone like that, I can’t break them."

"Everything we do, it changes the people we come in contact with, Dallet. You didn’t do anything to her on purpose, but you helped her get to the place she was at, just by being there."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe if I hadn’t come along, she’d still be on Corellia."

"And maybe if she hadn’t come along, you’d still be pushing drugs and poisoning children."

"You make it sound like I’ve made an improvement, and I know damned well you still think I’m a criminal." I don’t like to pout, but sometimes it just happens.

"You are a criminal."

"See? I’m impossibly bad. I know, you couldn’t ever understand how it is to be me, because you came up from some picture-perfect past, and even now you’re trying to avenge the bad guys that killed your family. You’re like a holodrama heroine, and I’m the guy that betrays you in the next-to-last scene."

"We’re both criminals, Dallet. Maybe my bounty’s not as high as yours yet, but the Empire wants me to end up dead too. Why didn’t you desert in Buzzard? Stark gave you permission. He didn’t want you in the unit."

"I know, he told me you pushed him to draft me."

"I did." She spoke haltingly. "I thought we owed it to you, after what happened in the compound."

"Nah. I brought that on myself."

"Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, everything we do changes the people we know somehow. Who knows if being pinned down in the Depot didn’t change us both, you know, obligate us."

"You don’t owe me anything Pemwik, trust me. I’m just a bad man with a crazy lizard, and we’re going off on some damned fool crusade. Normal folks got to get on with their normal lives, even if they are holodrama heroes." I smiled, in spite of myself.

"Why’d you come back for me then? You could have gone, but you wouldn’t leave without me."

"Kah’s got some idea that I’m going to be a Jedi some day." I dropped that bomb on her. "I couldn’t just leave you there, the old reptile would have chided me about it for weeks. His ‘guilt trips’ include beatings. He has very definite opinions about how a Jedi should act."

"A Jedi?" Despite the fact that even we didn’t know where in hyperspace we were, despite the fact that there was literally no technological way to eavesdrop on us from outside our ship, because there was nothing outside our ship except atypical physics, and despite the fact that everyone else on the ship already knew about my Jedi delusions; she looked around and lowered her voice as if I’d just shouted ‘I practice cannibalism’ on a crowded street. "What makes you think you’re going to be a Jedi?"

"Nothing sister, except a giant lizard. And a crazy human woman. And the fact that I can move stuff around with my mind. And this." I pulled out the housing I’d been working on, and the power source Pesh had made for me. I wonder if Pesh survived Buzzard.

"What is it?"

"Pressure vent, I think. Part of a docking port assembly. And this is something Pesh made for me. It’s a power source."

"So what are you going to do with it?"

"When I can figure out what I’m missing, I’m going to make it into a lightsaber."

"You really are crazy Dallet. I mean it, you should knock that freppa off right now, if someone hears you… you could end up in trouble." Her eyes weren’t quite so frozen anymore. What’s this, I thought, real concern from a woman scorned?

"I’d love to. I should. I can’t. I don’t know what happened in that pod, but I think I might have started to go crazy when I got burned up over Dallet-Two. Things haven’t been the same since."

"And now you’ve gone and gotten drafted into the Army. You’re a soldier of the Rebellion."

"Probably not for long. Nothing personal, but I really do have to find her."

"Do you have any idea how much having a Jedi on our side would help our morale?" She seemed incredulous that I might not consider joining her crusade permanently. One crusade at a time. One’s enough.

"Do you have any idea how many people would be trying to kill me? I mean really professional guys, not rookies and druggies. The real thing."

"We could protect you, we could work something out."

"Fiti, like what? Like you couldn’t ever let me out to actually fight, or get near the troops, because any one of them might shoot me? Or like I had to spend every waking moment shuffling from one hiding place to another? There used to be a lot of Jedi, twenty years ago. They’re all dead now, every one of them. Every one of them were better Jedi than I ever will be. They had other Jedi too, a whole Republic, to defend them. Didn’t help any of them."

"That’s exactly what we’re fighting for though, to bring back the old Republic. To bring back the Jedi."

"I know, " I said wearily. "I know all of that. It’s probably the right thing to do too, but I owe her. I owe her everything. I have this sick feeling that if I don’t at least try to find her, then no matter what else I do, no matter how good a guy I become, that I’ll still be a failure." What are you, Kah had asked. "I’m tired of being a failure. I just want to get something right for once. After that, maybe I can come back and help the Rebellion. I can probably help it best by not screwing it up."

She seemed to consider my words for some time. I could hear Kah waking up behind us, and coming ‘forward’ the few steps to the cockpit.

"Maybe if she could see you were on our side, she’d forgive you. You can’t turn your back on us, you know we need every single trooper we can get. You might not make it back. She might kill you herself."

"You’re right, but it doesn’t let me off the hook."

"Good morning, Dallet-cha, Lieutenant."

"Morning Kah. I told her about my training, and about Petra. I told her everything."

"That is good, I suppose. But why?" His tone said it was something of a rhetorical question.

"We’re partners, and shipmates. I didn’t want to have any secrets."

"And because he felt guilty about prying, Kah." Fiti added with a smug look.

"Well, that is for the best then." He smiled. "Did his story match what I told you two days ago then, Lieutenant?"

"Mostly, yes. You glossed over a few things about his past, but maybe you didn’t know or wanted to believe the best about him."

"Him? I’m sitting right here." I said indignantly. "What do you mean glossed over? And why did you tell her about me Kah?"

Fiti ignored my question, but Kah took it seriously.

"I did it for the same reasons as you, Dallet-cha. She deserved to know. I felt she had a poor opinion of you. I could not abide that. Any student of mine deserves to be truly represented."

Pemwik just smiled enigmatically. I ‘stormed’ out to do some maintenance.

I surveyed the shattered interconnects for the ion cannon. It wouldn’t be sending any signal, bellicose or otherwise, until it got some serious technical attention. The silicate coupling between the capacitance circuitry and the transfer collector had been partially vaporized, and what was left over was a handful of shards and knuckle-sized crystals, some driven across the cramped engineering tube to partially fuse with the far bulkhead.

This will be fun, I thought to myself, mentally tallying the repair costs. Even if my droid was a technical wizard, the semi-crystalline transfer couplings were expensive, and notoriously hard to come by. They didn’t take hyperspace well when left de-energized, and were expensive to ship cross-system. Big suppliers actually built large charging harnesses to keep minimal current running through the crystals to drive down the number of broken sets on delivery. Here was one set that wouldn’t ever see current again.

Things were never simple. Since Petra, it seemed that nothing had gone right, except maybe meeting Kah and getting off of the juice for a little while. Well, Pemwik wasn’t a total mess either, even if she did have a manipulative streak. And I guess, in retrospect, the droid wasn’t even a bad sort of fellow, but he was definitely crazy. I slid to a kind of seated position, not really comfortable in the access hatch, but less comfortable than remaining contorted over the conduit. When I leaned back against the bulkhead, the little knob at the back of my head bumped into something hard and sharp. I cursed, and felt the back of my head.

As I moved, a beam of light from out in the hallway fell upon the crystal, and I froze in midswing. It glowed with a pale blue light, almost cyan. But that wasn’t what stopped me, exactly.

It was a strange thing, the way all the pieces fit together after that. I remember vaguely turning each piece over and over in my hands, a few tools up in the cockpit with me served a mostly decorative purpose. I know time passed, because I faintly remember Fiti saying she was going to go sleep, and then trying to cajole me out of my chair what seemed like only minutes later. It wasn’t minutes though, it was hours. NC came forward and stared silently at me for a while, and then went back to his harness. Only Kah let me be, but he was probably the only one that knew what was going on.

"NC, I need some help up here." He trundled up.

He made a clamp-shape with the fingers of his other hand, and brought them together around the hilt, as if to crush it. My breath caught. The fingers descended slowly, until they just touched the edges of the tube. They expanded, and closed again then he rotated the tube slightly, and repeated the measurements. I started breathing again. He examined it from every angle, hands spinning unnaturally around at the wrists to measure and gage every possible dimension.

"This is beautiful Sir. The mechanism is very precisely done. I did not realize humans were capable of such work."

"I didn’t think droids found anything beautiful." I said, a bit taken aback.

I tried to watch everything he did, but his hands moved very quickly, and he was working on an impossibly small scale. I hovered tightly over his shoulder while he worked. If he’d been a human, I wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds before he told me to go cycle myself through the airlock, but he didn’t seem perturbed. After several minutes he spoke.

He brought his hands to rest on the makeshift workbench, and did not move. Eventually I got the hint, and made the three-step trek to the cockpit. The process was indeed being shown on the main viewscreen. He magnified the procedure so that I could see the minute connections he was making. His switching mechanism was a lesson in efficiency; no thicker than a credit-wafer, it sported several transducers along its circumference, which he fitted to very small pads along the surface of the hilt. His switch also contained a check valve for the pumping region, so that I wouldn’t have to remove the whole assembly or perform maintenance on the device in a vacuum. I saw him bring the crystal in towards the housing, and I bolted upright.

"No NC, that’s enough. I have to do the last part myself."

"Certainly Sir. Here it is then. I have taken the liberty of including several design features in the switch..."

"I saw some of them, they’re great."

"Thank you sir."

No turning back now, I realized.

He was right, as tight as the internal clearances were, the outside looked pretty banged up. That’s just exactly as it should be, I mused.

"Not necessary NC, it looks just fine to me."

"If you compress the hilt sir, near the ring of sensors, it will activate-"
"I know how to activate it NC, I just don’t know if I should." I felt Kah crowd in beside NC, then sink into his awkward hunch behind my chair. That left just enough room for NC to be crushed against a bulkhead full of switches.

"You know, you two, there’s no going back from this. If you’re here when I do this, you’re accomplices. If the Empire catches up with us – when they catch up with us, they’ll punish both of you too." It felt perfect in my hand, and I ached to activate it.

The moment finally came, and I squeezed the hilt. A brilliant blue beam of light extended smoothly, boiling the air it displaced away with a hissing sound. It settled into a low hum, and filled the cockpit with a pure light.

I stared at it for several long breaths, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of a single witty thing to say. It was like getting into space for the first time, and that kind of thing takes the breath right out of you.

"Beautiful, " said NC. "Optimal function."

Kah nodded slowly, in satisfaction.