Smuggler Archive
Thread: The Dallet Series Smuggler Fiction. 3.0 Now Playing
FrankLee
Sun Sep 19, 2004 12:58 am
#92
Wow, thanks gang. I was honestly worried that it had gotten just too dark at the end...
In essence, that's the 'end' of the Setup portion of the story. The character is fleshed out, the recent history is solid, the cast is set. The thing is, I don't like happy-happy kind of stories, they're not interesting. I wanted something bad to happen, and one of my private critics said that the story needed a turn back to the dark, so I wrote one. In so doing, I paved the way for some breathing room with Dallet, opened up my timeline a little, and set the stage for the next series of adventures.
Glad it's appreciated!
In essence, that's the 'end' of the Setup portion of the story. The character is fleshed out, the recent history is solid, the cast is set. The thing is, I don't like happy-happy kind of stories, they're not interesting. I wanted something bad to happen, and one of my private critics said that the story needed a turn back to the dark, so I wrote one. In so doing, I paved the way for some breathing room with Dallet, opened up my timeline a little, and set the stage for the next series of adventures.
Glad it's appreciated!
IndySWG
Mon Sep 20, 2004 2:15 pm
#93
FrankLee wrote:
Wow, thanks gang. I was honestly worried that it had gotten just too dark at the end...
In essence, that's the 'end' of the Setup portion of the story. The character is fleshed out, the recent history is solid, the cast is set. The thing is, I don't like happy-happy kind of stories, they're not interesting. I wanted something bad to happen, and one of my private critics said that the story needed a turn back to the dark, so I wrote one. In so doing, I paved the way for some breathing room with Dallet, opened up my timeline a little, and set the stage for the next series of adventures.
Glad it's appreciated!
....oh....my....God.....
*breathe* .... He'll write more .... *breathe* .... Dallet will save Petra .... *breath* ....
very good stories!
FrankLee
Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:15 pm
#94
IndySWG wrote:
FrankLee wrote:
Wow, thanks gang. I was honestly worried that it had gotten just too dark at the end...
In essence, that's the 'end' of the Setup portion of the story. The character is fleshed out, the recent history is solid, the cast is set. The thing is, I don't like happy-happy kind of stories, they're not interesting. I wanted something bad to happen, and one of my private critics said that the story needed a turn back to the dark, so I wrote one. In so doing, I paved the way for some breathing room with Dallet, opened up my timeline a little, and set the stage for the next series of adventures.
Glad it's appreciated!....oh....my....God.....*breathe* .... He'll write more .... *breathe* .... Dallet will save Petra .... *breath* ....very good stories!
Of course I'll write more. I enjoy the practice. I'm working on the premise for the next series of stories, it's just hard to consider them 'the setup' (original thread title) anymore, because it's been set up already. Think of the interlude as the 'repeat' part of the season.
weaselwarrior
Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:12 am
#95
/twitch
I need more frank......mooooooore!
/twitch
Not to rush you or anything. 
Maybe another update to assure us your writing more. 
FrankLee
Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:42 am
#96
I've got half of the 'intro' episode for the next series written. Been busy in other regards, and this part needs my full attention to pull it off well.
Special thanks to Sifer for his input and research.
Special thanks to Sifer for his input and research.
I WAS MENTIONED! thanks for thankin me
FrankLee
Fri Sep 24, 2004 7:12 pm
#98
Heh!
Well, I scuttled half of episode 2.1. Didn't like it. I'm a bit behind schedule now, so I'll let it simmer over the weekend and see what ideas I can come up with. I know where I want to go, but need to work on the setup for it. Perhaps next week, early/middle. Depends on if I get ganked over the weekend playing SWG.
Well, I scuttled half of episode 2.1. Didn't like it. I'm a bit behind schedule now, so I'll let it simmer over the weekend and see what ideas I can come up with. I know where I want to go, but need to work on the setup for it. Perhaps next week, early/middle. Depends on if I get ganked over the weekend playing SWG.
FrankLee
Wed Sep 29, 2004 6:34 pm
#100
I was going to post a new thread for the new set of stories, but I kinda like having such a long thread beside my name. Especially a 5-starred one. So, here you have it. The intro to the second series.
My name is Dallet GreenStar. Or Dallet-cha, just Dallet, or even Zillik. Depends on the timeline. Everything depends on the timeline, the same way as everything depends on your point of view. At one time, I was a soldier. I served a brief time in the Imperial Army, and was discharged. Even then I was preparing for my next calling in life, as a swindler. I swindled a discharge instead of a court-martial. I muddied the waters of around my infraction, and managed to get out of the service without being shot at (much). After that, I figured out that making an honest living was for honest people, and cheating those honest folks out of that living was my job.
I dealt, and I mean that in as many ways as can be imagined. I set up deals. I sold things, I bought things. I stole things, sold them, sometimes back to the people I'd stolen them from. I made, bought, and sold drugs, spices and narcotics of every variety. Hell, one time I even sold a bunch of drugs to a wookiee, then stole them back from him after he overdosed and killed himself before using much of them up. It suffices to say I wasn't the most honest or genuine guy in the galaxy. In fact, I probably tried to steal something from the most honest guy in the galaxy, or swindle him. That all changed around the second planet in the Dallet system.
I screwed up bad above Dallet-2. Got my (if you consider possession in the broadest quasi-legal sense) ship blown to hell, and almost got myself killed. In more ways than one, I did get myself killed. I got cooked in radiation, starved for oxygen, and hooked on the most dangerous drug ever created... but we'll skip that for now. After the Dallet-2 incident, things started to change. I'd love to say they changed for the better, but I'd be lying, and I try to do less of that now. So after Dallet-2, I changed my name, and I fell in with a woman named Petra Gullings. She's the most dangerous drug created.
See - Petra, there was something about her. Seems her whole life she spent dragging herself through the filth; drug use, poverty, prostitution... but there was a core of her that remained decent and human no matter what she was forced to endure. I almost killed her around Dallet-2; I left her for dead with too little oxygen, and too much narcotic. I'd left her a way to kill herself, and she almost did it. If she hadn't survived that little charity of mine, there'd have been nobody to save me from the radiation poisoning I managed to get myself fried in a quick slingshot-orbit of the planet,in an escape pod minus the appropriate shielding. She did more than save my life though, she reminded me that humans, indeed all sentients, have a responsibility to safeguard one another's souls. She'd told me she was guided by some fool vision. At the time, I thought it was just her way of excusing her human qualities.
She was taken from me, and I'm not sure how. A bounty hunter named Spakta had been tracking us for quite a while (we'd marooned him on Dallet-2) and finally caught up with us. He and his boys beat me witless in a confrontation, and would have killed me without the intervention of my droid associate NC. NC succeeded in getting most of his mass re-randomized, and I got about a dozen bones broken, but we made it. Petra didn't. She'd been back on the ship, formerly Spakta's ship, and Spakta decided he wanted her more than he wanted to stay and finish me off. I almost don't blame him, she was worth five hundred thousand credits if taken alive. Quite a price for my little Petra. That didn't save Spakta. Petra got loose, and sent me what was left of him in another pod. I thought I was rescuing her, and I was really rescuing him. I cooked him off in reentry to Tatooine, and I hope he burned for a long time. I don't know what he did to her while they were in hyperspace, but he screwed her up so bad she wasn't Petra anymore when he got done with her. She was something terrible to see, and she paid him back but good. Then she told me I would be next if I followed her, which is why I sent what was left of him into high-speed disintegrating oribit around this Force-blasted ball of dust I'm on now.
*Mos Eisley*
I knew before he got back to the table he had bad news. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, but most of all I could see it in the fact that he did not have another drink for me. I had clearly requested another drink, in a volume that would have allowed any species with even itty-bitty-baby ears to hear me.
"Your tab is done Dallet, and you're done too. Get out."
"I been drinkin' here for two months Zizzizzigogo and I always pay my tab up full."
"It's Zochi'grogota, human, and you gave us a certificate of credit that bounced. You want to try to crawl out on your own, or should I get the boys to haul your ass out?"
"I can walk jus' fine, Zippy. Let me finish and I'll leave."
"You've been finished for a week. Get out. Now."
So I left. You'd think, in a place as famous as Mos Eisley, that there'd be more drinking establishments catering to a distinguished gentleman like myself. Sure, I'd gone to seed a little after that bit with Petra, but I was bouncing back just fine - I was just down on my luck.
I fed myself that line outside of every place I got kicked out of, and the drunk part of my mind liked to believe it. After I'd been kicked out of two dozen bars, I was pretty good at slinging that garbage. Somewhere though a sober part of me knew that I was poisoning the well; I couldn't expect to deal or work out of these places anymore, they'd remember me. That sober part of me knew what I was doing: I was trying to find a way to drink myself to death. I'd seen it enough times, even catered to it a few times, to know the signs. That alone didn't scare me. The part that scared me, the part that convinced me to hit the bottle early and often, was the fact that I didn't care. Hit the bottle, and quit worrying. It was time to check out anyway, I'd cheated the house a few times, but it was time to cash in. Only nobody wanted my chips. I thought the house always won.
I found myself back at a pitiful hole of a bar called Carkoon's Belly. It was a disreputable place, and I hadn't been in it for months. Right before the recent unpleasantness with Petra, I'd set up a deal in here that had helped get one waitress, one bounty hunter, and two thugs killed nearby, and that's never good for business unless you're the coroner and it's an election cycle. Not to mention the fact that a certain Resistance fighter was shafted for a sizable business investment of time and money, when my deal fell through. I haven't been back in ages, I thought to myself, maybe they'll have forgotten me.
"What'll it be, Dallet? Bliel?" Guess the bartender remembered. He seemed friendly enough. Never trust friendly people.
"Nah, old buddy. Maybe make it something with a little more hair. A sunburn?"
"Sure, this one's on the house."
"That's right friendly of you!" Maybe they were over that bit about the multiple killings and a lot of blasterfire. Sometimes people suprise me with their decency and capacity for sympathy. I downed the sunburn good-naturedly, and smiled drunkenly at the bartender. What was his name again? It took me only a few seconds to realize he'd drugged my drink, and I was going to be blissfully unconscious when his gang beat me to death. This kind of thing really shouldn't have happened to a guy that used to traffic in spice on a regular basis. It was poor form to fall victim to your own tricks. Belatedly I reached for my comm to buzz my droid, but I'd sold the comm a week ago, and hadn't returned any of the droids messages in a month. Oh well, I thought, I get my wish sooner than I thought. Maybe I'll get to kill Spakta again in hell. Maybe vice-versa.
*Later*
A slap threatened to waken me, but did not succeed. The water did the trick though. It's amazing how sober you can get when you wonder how in the hell you can be drowning on a desert planet.
"What the?!" I gurgle-cursed.
"Do you wish to disgrace my school, or my art?" Another slap, and a familiar voice. I was busy getting the water out of my eyes, I couldn't see who was hitting me. Wham! Another slug, expertly delivered, returned me forcefully to what I assume had been a sitting position. "Well human? Do you wish to dishonor my good name?"
Kah. He was here, and he was angry. I hadn't seen him in what seemed like a lifetime. I'd never seen him angry, and I suspect all the men that had seen him angry hadn't lived, or at least had the uncommonly good sense to shut up about it. His eyes had turned a deep red, and were squinted down to slits, pupils all but invisible. His ears had pulled a little bit away from his head, fanning out like a snake's hood, and making him look pretty mean. Truthfully, he'd already looked pretty mean, and the ears just freaked me right out.
Trandoshans are lizard-humanoids. They're bloody big, and they're reptilian. That alone is enough to make most people cross the street to avoid them. This particular Trandoshan happened to be a Master-ranked teacher of an ancient art called Teras Kasi, or the Steel Hands. That art taught him exotic new ways to kill people much stronger than myself with his bare hands, or feet, or teeth. Or foul language, probably. I hadn't studied enough to be sure.
"Master Kah, " I began, hunting for the appropriate angle to play to work him down, "what are you doing here..." I looked around, trying to figure out where 'here' was. "What are we doing here in my ship, I mean?" It bore a striking resemblance to my ship, it was a safe guess.
"I paid the bartender to call me if you showed up. Your droid contacted me weeks ago. I have come to ask you to resume your study." I didn't think lizards could growl, but you learn something new every day. If it was going to be a school-reuniion, why did he still sound like I'd made an omlette out of his brood? And why did I get the impression that 'ask' wasn't the most appropriate verb for his meaning?
"But I thought I was done..."
"Bah, fool. You are never finished with the path. It leads to enlightenment, which is perfection. That is not attainable."
"I don't feel enlightened, " I said, rubbing my jaw.
"You do not look enlightened either. You look like a drunk. You are covered in vomit." I was covered in vomit, how nice of him to notice.
"Well, I'm not going back. I see what good it did Petra." That wasn't a fair statement. Something had twisted her, and she was lucky to be alive. Probably her training had kept her from dying in captivity. I guess alive and sane had been too much to ask for. The blow that caught me happened so quickly, and I was so boozed up, that I swear to this day he didn't move. It was like he reached out and cuffed me along my ear without doing more than glaring at me. Maybe I'd learn that bit if I went back too.
"Dammit Kah! Stop hitting me."
"Make me. You are finished with the training, you should be able to handle me without any trouble." He hit me again. It was blurry, but at least I saw him moving that time. Still rung my bell though.
"I'm drunk, and drugged, you want to fight me in this state lizard? This what you need to win?"
"I would love to take you sober human, but you have been drunk for two months!" Wham, another whack. Inky darkness surrounded my vision, I suspected I'd be taking another nap soon.
I struggled to my feet, assuming a left-forward stance. It's a good stance for a righty like myself. Well, it's a good stance for a sober righty. Slipping your weight smoothly, that was a big thing in a fight, moving but never completely losing balance. Try doing that drunk some time before you criticize me! I slid into the stance pretty well, but I just kept on sliding. I got righted before I fell down, but it felt like my stomach was still headed down. There wasn't really much to bring back up this time, so throwing up didn't take too long.
I stumbled over to the acceleration-couch, and sat down. To my shock, Kah sat down across from me. He stared at me for long minutes, those reptilian eyes peeling back the layers of my drunken psyche, as if his will alone could sober me up. I don't know if his will had anything to do with it, but after a while I started to get clear-headed again. Wasn't a big treat.
"Do you know what you are yet Dallet-cha?" It had been his first serious question to me: "What are you?" I'd answered poorly, I'd told him things I'd done, or things that had been done to me, but nothing that I was. Being something, that was not entirely external. It could exist without the influence of the outer world. I guess I knew a few things about myself that defined who I was. I didn't really like them though.
"Sure Kah, I know."
"Then what are you?"
"A failure."
"Yes, " he began, nodding. It's hard to realize how wierd it was to go from being battered around your ship by him, then engaging in esoteric debates with him. "That is a beginning. We are all failures. We are all successes. We try to be more successes than failures."
"I'm more failures."
"Perhaps so, but knowing where to start is a success. What else are you?"
"Tired. Scared. Hurt." Broken, I thought to myself, but I wasn't going to say it out loud. There's a difference between hurt and broken. Hurt things get better, broken things need to get fixed before they get better.
"Feelings, fleeting. They will pass."
"Sure, the booze helps them pass right along."
"The drinking is a failure. The droid has told me of your excesses. The things will pass as easily if your mind is clear."
"Maybe, but the booze is easier to come by. And what does NC know anyway?"
"The droid informed me that you had drunk all of your available funds. He diagnosed you as having an obsessive post-traumatic disorder, and claimed that you might do something irrational. I have watched you sell your belongings for another drink. I can show you another way to find peace." He was getting enigmatic, as he liked to sometimes. Might take an hour to work around to what he actually meant... unless I short-circuited him.
"What, you're going to teach me to use the Force? You're some kind of Jedi now too?" I figured to rile him up a little.
"I am no Jedi, but I have learned some things from them. I have learned how to hunt them, and it has taught me much about them."
"So what makes you think you can show me what I need to know?"
"Nothing, Dallet-cha. But I know what I can show you, and you cannot possibly think my teaching worse than... this." His arms opened to encompass the little 'lounge' in my terribly ugly ship. The floor was wet with vomit, half the interior lights had burned out and not been replaced, it stank, and it was stuffy. He was right, it didn't get a whole lot worse than this.
"You're right, as usual. I can fly to the school in the morning. Let me sleep this one off." And, I added silently, I think I still have a bottle of 'jump tucked under my cot.
"We are not flying this time. We are walking. You need the exercise. We leave when you are packed."
"Kah, it's like... a hundred klicks to your school. I'll die walking there."
"You might, but we are not going to my school. We will learn, but we will need a new campus." It's hard to tell when a lizard is smiling, but I think he smiled, just for a second.
"Oh yeah, and where is this new campus?"
It took us 3 days to get to where Kah decided we wouldn't be bothered. By this I had to assume 'bothered' to him meant 'bothered' with food or water, or shade, because we sure weren't bothered by any of those things. You'd really be amazed at how quickly the desire for a shot of hard liquor can turn into the desire for some nice lukewarm water. There's water in the desert. They use these harvesting things to draw it out, and condense it, and make it useful to us weak-skinned humans. I raided several on the way to our site. Kah said it was dishonorable (of course, he had scales, which don't leak water like a sieve), but he didn't stop me.
Kah liked the desert. Apparently something about being baked for hours and hours at a time appealed to him. He stripped naked (yeah, I know) and made me carry his gear along with my own. Trandoshans apparently don't have any cultural taboos about nudity. I could see why, they had virtually nothing external to worry about exposing. Well, whatever. Other species were wierd sometimes, and Kah was probably wierder than most of his species. At least someone was enjoying the outdoors.
It was hot, and bright, and dry. Kah had found a deep valley for us to take up temporary residence in, and it provided shelter from the suns most of the time, and was significantly cooler than the surrounding dunes. It was still hot. After I set up the portable vaporator kits, I choked down a dry travel biscuit and set up my shelter.
Some day I'm going to find the genius that thought it was a good idea to include a waterproof shelter for a desert survival pack. The waterproofing make the shelter almost airtight as well, and its dark color made it an oven. It was about as useful as an inflatable emergency raft but at least we didn't have one of them. I cut the tent to shreds on the second day, and used it to make a sunshield. I burned easily now, and even with the super-protective creams and pills the kit had, I was browning up almost as much as my lizard companion.
"Breathe, " he said, again, "and clear your mind." We'd been doing a lot of that. I could do it pretty fast now. Kah said that wasn't good enough, that when I was proficient (not an expert, just proficient) that I'd be living in that void of emotion more than I lived outside of it. I told him I wasn't sure it was a good way to live. He said not doing it was a good way to die, so we stopped talking about that. I just did what he told me. "And, release. Good." I was cleared.
It had helped, at first, to practice the meditation techniques. They kept my attention (or lack thereof) away from the memory of Petra, and it felt like muscles all over my body relaxed when I stopped thinking about her. As soon as I noticed it though, she came slamming back into my foremost thoughts. I could still see here eyes, glowing with the accusation of betrayal. I wanted to go to her, to show her...
Wham. I was slapped upside the head by a large reptilian hand. Kah seemed to think this was more effective than verbal reinforcement.
"Begin again. Breathe."
The protein wafers were boring after the first week. They were gone after the second. I'd taken to hunting with Kah in the 'mornings' (I have mentioned that I can't tell how the day/night cycle works on that bloody planet, haven't I?) and using the leftovers to attract more scavengers to eat by the next morning. Kah seemed to have forgotten about his clothing and gear altogether, and I never once caught him drinking from our 'still. Maybe he's really a droid, I thought. No, droids are more charming.
The days and nights filled with "breathe" and "release". I could blank my mind in a moment, and the flowing forms of the Teras Kasi came to me like thought. They were fluid and perfect. Finally, they started to mean something to me. Each one was a lesson, each told a story, each had a meaning. One told the story of a fool who had overextended himself, and struggled to return to balance. Another told of a hero beset on all sides by giant attackers, bent on crushing his life out. I moved from form to form, and somewhere in there I realized that I could do so effortlessly, and virtually without thought. I also realized I'd learned nothing new since coming to this heat-blasted oven of a schoolroom.
"Master Kah, " I began, "why do we endlessley repeat the same lesson? I'm getting nothing new out of this." This was during one of his rare 'rest' sessions.
"You take new knowledge from every breath. You are nearing proficiency in the opening forms now. You might soon be called 'capable' of meditation, if not fluent."
"I know, but I've learned nothing new about the Teras Kasi way; I never knew that much to begin with, but we keep doing forms I learned months ago!"
"Are you a complete fool? You are not here to learn how to be a Teras Kasi. You are here to learn what I can teach you about the Jedi."
"Then why are we doing all of these stupid breathing exercises? Why hours of meditation, and not enough water?" I hadn't meant to mention the water, but it was heartily ticking me off, being thirsty all the time.
"Now I am sure you are a fool. Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a cluttered mind? Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a whining child? No, these things you must learn to go beyond, and these things I can teach you! Concentration. Discipline. Control. Focus. All these things you lack. You need these, and this is how I can teach them." He almost seemed like he was making his case to himself, not only to me.
"I have plenty of control."
"Nonsense, you are defined by your lack of control. A month ago you were wallowing in your own filth, drinking yourself to death. A year ago you were selling others the drugs to do the same. You are in control now?"
He had a point, I had been a bit out of whack. It was Petra that made it that way, at least recently, I thought glumly. And it was me that made her the way she was now. Stupidity, I told myself, I can't even make my thoughts go where I want them. I'm not here to complain about someone doing something to me, I'm here to learn how to make sure it doesn't happen again. No, that's not it either, I thought. I'm here to learn what I am, maybe even change what I am. When I know that, I'll be able to make that kind of failure less likely. I'll never be able to totally avoid it. Not a great and enlightening concept, I thought, but a start.
"I am in more control than I was."
"This is true, Dallet-cha. Now we will begin again. Assume your fighting stance, and attack my guard."
The next day 'dawned' (which means it got hot enough to cook the rat-meat under a lens instead of in an oven), and we did not resume our normal routine of breathing, running, hunting, baiting, breathing, and so forth. We hiked, in silence, to a pass that took us up and out of the valley. When we'd reached a kind of mesa overlooking our own campsite, Kah squatted down in his meditative posture. I'm in for a long morning, I thought to myself.
"The Force is everywhere, Dallet-cha." He spoke so softly and without preamble that it startled me. I dropped into a crouch before him. "Even the Teras Kasi know this. Children of all species know this, but adults usually disparage them of the notion." Disparage? I thought about getting him some Dosh-to-Basic vernacular datapads, but put the thought aside for later conversation.
"It connects all things, " he continued, "to one another, by flowing through and around them. It can be felt, and sensed. It violates the physical laws you spacers hold so dear." He paused, maybe to let the slow, sun-baked human figure that out. I took it as an invitation for comment, because I'm a smartass.
"Why can't I see it then, why can't it be measured?"
"What does the wind look like? What would you measure it with? How would you measure how much sand is in the desert? It is everywhere, it refuses to be counted."
"Then it's alive? It has a will?"
"It has many wills. I do not know if it is alive."
"So what about a Jedi's will, is it stronger?" His response was a wry chuckle. I think that's what it was anyway, Trandoshan-chuckles seem a bit more violent than the human analog.
"Jedi are among the most willful sentients the galaxy can ever know! They can be arrogant, prideful, egotistic. They are the most in need of control and discipline."
"Why, if they're so strong?"
"They have power, yes, but the power has its own will. Sometimes dark things roam the Force, and that will begins to corrupt the Jedi. If they have no control, it uses them as a tool, they way they would use it. Most of them do not survive, because the Dark Side is a hungry thing and does not care what it consumes. Sometimes though, it has enough cleverness to know when it has a tool of great value, and then that one becomes very terrible."
"Like Vader?"
"Yes, like Vader. He is a great funnel to the darkness, a great failure of self-control."
"Is that what happened to Petra then? She was a victim of this 'will' of the Force?"
"No, Petra was a victim to nothing but her own failure. She was weak when she needed to be strong, she was tempted when she needed to resist."
"How can you say that? How dare you criticize her? What do you know about this kind of thing? What do you know about being tortured and beaten and whatever else that piece of filth did to her? How dare you!" I stood upright, ready to leave. I didn't know where exactly to go, but 'away' sounded pretty good.
"I have killed failures like her before, and loved them every bit as much as I love her. Never have I had a Jedi as a student, and now I have two." I stopped, staring. Kah didn't have human emotions, especially not love. Probably a translation difficulty.
"She was a prized student, Dallet-cha. Just like you. And just like many other Jedi I have known, she has fallen."
"So, it's a Jedi problem now, right? Why would you care?"
"No, Dallet-cha. Long ago, it would have been a problem for the Council, or perhaps for my Teras Kasi brothers."
"If she's as far gone as you make it sound, Kah, she's going to be a big problem. The Jedi will have to come out of hiding for her."
"Dallet, there are no Jedi anymore. They are all gone, all of them. Vader has broken the balance of things."
"But Kah, the vids, the holo-news, there's Jedi everywhere, I mean, they're hiding on almost every planet... they're terrorizing- "
"The Jedi are dead, Dallet. The are dead and gone, murdered. There may be wilders, and untrained fools, but there are no more Jedi. That is why I risk teaching you myself, Dallet. I will teach you everything I know of them, which is scarcely more than nothing. I will teach you how to fight them, because at that I am a mamster. I will show you what must be done, and then you and I will go, student and master."
"Go where?" This was not sounding good. This was sounding long-term too, and I didn't like the idea of long-term in this heat. I didn't like the idea of another ten minutes in it, actually. It would be so much easier to walk away now, and I might even survive the walk back to civilization. I was in better shape from the training than I had been in years. I felt like I was rooted to the ledge though, because that damned Trandoshan was so still and determined.
"We will seek out Petra, and return her to the light. If we cannot, we will destroy her before she can upset the balance even further."
"Man, can we even do that? She looked pretty angry, and I've heard that those guys can kill you from a system away..." I tried to remember what I'd heard about Vader. None of it was pleasant. He was cold, ruthless, and always won. Always. And he usually killed everyone opposed to him in some spectacular and convincing way. "We could get killed trying to - "
"We will not try, Dallet. We will succeed or we will die."
So, here you have it. The intro to the second series.My name is Dallet GreenStar. Or Dallet-cha, just Dallet, or even Zillik. Depends on the timeline. Everything depends on the timeline, the same way as everything depends on your point of view. At one time, I was a soldier. I served a brief time in the Imperial Army, and was discharged. Even then I was preparing for my next calling in life, as a swindler. I swindled a discharge instead of a court-martial. I muddied the waters of around my infraction, and managed to get out of the service without being shot at (much). After that, I figured out that making an honest living was for honest people, and cheating those honest folks out of that living was my job.
I dealt, and I mean that in as many ways as can be imagined. I set up deals. I sold things, I bought things. I stole things, sold them, sometimes back to the people I'd stolen them from. I made, bought, and sold drugs, spices and narcotics of every variety. Hell, one time I even sold a bunch of drugs to a wookiee, then stole them back from him after he overdosed and killed himself before using much of them up. It suffices to say I wasn't the most honest or genuine guy in the galaxy. In fact, I probably tried to steal something from the most honest guy in the galaxy, or swindle him. That all changed around the second planet in the Dallet system.
I screwed up bad above Dallet-2. Got my (if you consider possession in the broadest quasi-legal sense) ship blown to hell, and almost got myself killed. In more ways than one, I did get myself killed. I got cooked in radiation, starved for oxygen, and hooked on the most dangerous drug ever created... but we'll skip that for now. After the Dallet-2 incident, things started to change. I'd love to say they changed for the better, but I'd be lying, and I try to do less of that now. So after Dallet-2, I changed my name, and I fell in with a woman named Petra Gullings. She's the most dangerous drug created.
See - Petra, there was something about her. Seems her whole life she spent dragging herself through the filth; drug use, poverty, prostitution... but there was a core of her that remained decent and human no matter what she was forced to endure. I almost killed her around Dallet-2; I left her for dead with too little oxygen, and too much narcotic. I'd left her a way to kill herself, and she almost did it. If she hadn't survived that little charity of mine, there'd have been nobody to save me from the radiation poisoning I managed to get myself fried in a quick slingshot-orbit of the planet,in an escape pod minus the appropriate shielding. She did more than save my life though, she reminded me that humans, indeed all sentients, have a responsibility to safeguard one another's souls. She'd told me she was guided by some fool vision. At the time, I thought it was just her way of excusing her human qualities.
She was taken from me, and I'm not sure how. A bounty hunter named Spakta had been tracking us for quite a while (we'd marooned him on Dallet-2) and finally caught up with us. He and his boys beat me witless in a confrontation, and would have killed me without the intervention of my droid associate NC. NC succeeded in getting most of his mass re-randomized, and I got about a dozen bones broken, but we made it. Petra didn't. She'd been back on the ship, formerly Spakta's ship, and Spakta decided he wanted her more than he wanted to stay and finish me off. I almost don't blame him, she was worth five hundred thousand credits if taken alive. Quite a price for my little Petra. That didn't save Spakta. Petra got loose, and sent me what was left of him in another pod. I thought I was rescuing her, and I was really rescuing him. I cooked him off in reentry to Tatooine, and I hope he burned for a long time. I don't know what he did to her while they were in hyperspace, but he screwed her up so bad she wasn't Petra anymore when he got done with her. She was something terrible to see, and she paid him back but good. Then she told me I would be next if I followed her, which is why I sent what was left of him into high-speed disintegrating oribit around this Force-blasted ball of dust I'm on now.
*Mos Eisley*
I knew before he got back to the table he had bad news. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, but most of all I could see it in the fact that he did not have another drink for me. I had clearly requested another drink, in a volume that would have allowed any species with even itty-bitty-baby ears to hear me.
"Your tab is done Dallet, and you're done too. Get out."
"I been drinkin' here for two months Zizzizzigogo and I always pay my tab up full."
"It's Zochi'grogota, human, and you gave us a certificate of credit that bounced. You want to try to crawl out on your own, or should I get the boys to haul your ass out?"
"I can walk jus' fine, Zippy. Let me finish and I'll leave."
"You've been finished for a week. Get out. Now."
So I left. You'd think, in a place as famous as Mos Eisley, that there'd be more drinking establishments catering to a distinguished gentleman like myself. Sure, I'd gone to seed a little after that bit with Petra, but I was bouncing back just fine - I was just down on my luck.
I fed myself that line outside of every place I got kicked out of, and the drunk part of my mind liked to believe it. After I'd been kicked out of two dozen bars, I was pretty good at slinging that garbage. Somewhere though a sober part of me knew that I was poisoning the well; I couldn't expect to deal or work out of these places anymore, they'd remember me. That sober part of me knew what I was doing: I was trying to find a way to drink myself to death. I'd seen it enough times, even catered to it a few times, to know the signs. That alone didn't scare me. The part that scared me, the part that convinced me to hit the bottle early and often, was the fact that I didn't care. Hit the bottle, and quit worrying. It was time to check out anyway, I'd cheated the house a few times, but it was time to cash in. Only nobody wanted my chips. I thought the house always won.
I found myself back at a pitiful hole of a bar called Carkoon's Belly. It was a disreputable place, and I hadn't been in it for months. Right before the recent unpleasantness with Petra, I'd set up a deal in here that had helped get one waitress, one bounty hunter, and two thugs killed nearby, and that's never good for business unless you're the coroner and it's an election cycle. Not to mention the fact that a certain Resistance fighter was shafted for a sizable business investment of time and money, when my deal fell through. I haven't been back in ages, I thought to myself, maybe they'll have forgotten me.
"What'll it be, Dallet? Bliel?" Guess the bartender remembered. He seemed friendly enough. Never trust friendly people.
"Nah, old buddy. Maybe make it something with a little more hair. A sunburn?"
"Sure, this one's on the house."
"That's right friendly of you!" Maybe they were over that bit about the multiple killings and a lot of blasterfire. Sometimes people suprise me with their decency and capacity for sympathy. I downed the sunburn good-naturedly, and smiled drunkenly at the bartender. What was his name again? It took me only a few seconds to realize he'd drugged my drink, and I was going to be blissfully unconscious when his gang beat me to death. This kind of thing really shouldn't have happened to a guy that used to traffic in spice on a regular basis. It was poor form to fall victim to your own tricks. Belatedly I reached for my comm to buzz my droid, but I'd sold the comm a week ago, and hadn't returned any of the droids messages in a month. Oh well, I thought, I get my wish sooner than I thought. Maybe I'll get to kill Spakta again in hell. Maybe vice-versa.
*Later*
A slap threatened to waken me, but did not succeed. The water did the trick though. It's amazing how sober you can get when you wonder how in the hell you can be drowning on a desert planet.
"What the?!" I gurgle-cursed.
"Do you wish to disgrace my school, or my art?" Another slap, and a familiar voice. I was busy getting the water out of my eyes, I couldn't see who was hitting me. Wham! Another slug, expertly delivered, returned me forcefully to what I assume had been a sitting position. "Well human? Do you wish to dishonor my good name?"
Kah. He was here, and he was angry. I hadn't seen him in what seemed like a lifetime. I'd never seen him angry, and I suspect all the men that had seen him angry hadn't lived, or at least had the uncommonly good sense to shut up about it. His eyes had turned a deep red, and were squinted down to slits, pupils all but invisible. His ears had pulled a little bit away from his head, fanning out like a snake's hood, and making him look pretty mean. Truthfully, he'd already looked pretty mean, and the ears just freaked me right out.
Trandoshans are lizard-humanoids. They're bloody big, and they're reptilian. That alone is enough to make most people cross the street to avoid them. This particular Trandoshan happened to be a Master-ranked teacher of an ancient art called Teras Kasi, or the Steel Hands. That art taught him exotic new ways to kill people much stronger than myself with his bare hands, or feet, or teeth. Or foul language, probably. I hadn't studied enough to be sure.
"Master Kah, " I began, hunting for the appropriate angle to play to work him down, "what are you doing here..." I looked around, trying to figure out where 'here' was. "What are we doing here in my ship, I mean?" It bore a striking resemblance to my ship, it was a safe guess.
"I paid the bartender to call me if you showed up. Your droid contacted me weeks ago. I have come to ask you to resume your study." I didn't think lizards could growl, but you learn something new every day. If it was going to be a school-reuniion, why did he still sound like I'd made an omlette out of his brood? And why did I get the impression that 'ask' wasn't the most appropriate verb for his meaning?
"But I thought I was done..."
"Bah, fool. You are never finished with the path. It leads to enlightenment, which is perfection. That is not attainable."
"I don't feel enlightened, " I said, rubbing my jaw.
"You do not look enlightened either. You look like a drunk. You are covered in vomit." I was covered in vomit, how nice of him to notice.
"Well, I'm not going back. I see what good it did Petra." That wasn't a fair statement. Something had twisted her, and she was lucky to be alive. Probably her training had kept her from dying in captivity. I guess alive and sane had been too much to ask for. The blow that caught me happened so quickly, and I was so boozed up, that I swear to this day he didn't move. It was like he reached out and cuffed me along my ear without doing more than glaring at me. Maybe I'd learn that bit if I went back too.
"Dammit Kah! Stop hitting me."
"Make me. You are finished with the training, you should be able to handle me without any trouble." He hit me again. It was blurry, but at least I saw him moving that time. Still rung my bell though.
"I'm drunk, and drugged, you want to fight me in this state lizard? This what you need to win?"
"I would love to take you sober human, but you have been drunk for two months!" Wham, another whack. Inky darkness surrounded my vision, I suspected I'd be taking another nap soon.
I struggled to my feet, assuming a left-forward stance. It's a good stance for a righty like myself. Well, it's a good stance for a sober righty. Slipping your weight smoothly, that was a big thing in a fight, moving but never completely losing balance. Try doing that drunk some time before you criticize me! I slid into the stance pretty well, but I just kept on sliding. I got righted before I fell down, but it felt like my stomach was still headed down. There wasn't really much to bring back up this time, so throwing up didn't take too long.
I stumbled over to the acceleration-couch, and sat down. To my shock, Kah sat down across from me. He stared at me for long minutes, those reptilian eyes peeling back the layers of my drunken psyche, as if his will alone could sober me up. I don't know if his will had anything to do with it, but after a while I started to get clear-headed again. Wasn't a big treat.
"Do you know what you are yet Dallet-cha?" It had been his first serious question to me: "What are you?" I'd answered poorly, I'd told him things I'd done, or things that had been done to me, but nothing that I was. Being something, that was not entirely external. It could exist without the influence of the outer world. I guess I knew a few things about myself that defined who I was. I didn't really like them though.
"Sure Kah, I know."
"Then what are you?"
"A failure."
"Yes, " he began, nodding. It's hard to realize how wierd it was to go from being battered around your ship by him, then engaging in esoteric debates with him. "That is a beginning. We are all failures. We are all successes. We try to be more successes than failures."
"I'm more failures."
"Perhaps so, but knowing where to start is a success. What else are you?"
"Tired. Scared. Hurt." Broken, I thought to myself, but I wasn't going to say it out loud. There's a difference between hurt and broken. Hurt things get better, broken things need to get fixed before they get better.
"Feelings, fleeting. They will pass."
"Sure, the booze helps them pass right along."
"The drinking is a failure. The droid has told me of your excesses. The things will pass as easily if your mind is clear."
"Maybe, but the booze is easier to come by. And what does NC know anyway?"
"The droid informed me that you had drunk all of your available funds. He diagnosed you as having an obsessive post-traumatic disorder, and claimed that you might do something irrational. I have watched you sell your belongings for another drink. I can show you another way to find peace." He was getting enigmatic, as he liked to sometimes. Might take an hour to work around to what he actually meant... unless I short-circuited him.
"What, you're going to teach me to use the Force? You're some kind of Jedi now too?" I figured to rile him up a little.
"I am no Jedi, but I have learned some things from them. I have learned how to hunt them, and it has taught me much about them."
"So what makes you think you can show me what I need to know?"
"Nothing, Dallet-cha. But I know what I can show you, and you cannot possibly think my teaching worse than... this." His arms opened to encompass the little 'lounge' in my terribly ugly ship. The floor was wet with vomit, half the interior lights had burned out and not been replaced, it stank, and it was stuffy. He was right, it didn't get a whole lot worse than this.
"You're right, as usual. I can fly to the school in the morning. Let me sleep this one off." And, I added silently, I think I still have a bottle of 'jump tucked under my cot.
"We are not flying this time. We are walking. You need the exercise. We leave when you are packed."
"Kah, it's like... a hundred klicks to your school. I'll die walking there."
"You might, but we are not going to my school. We will learn, but we will need a new campus." It's hard to tell when a lizard is smiling, but I think he smiled, just for a second.
"Oh yeah, and where is this new campus?"
It took us 3 days to get to where Kah decided we wouldn't be bothered. By this I had to assume 'bothered' to him meant 'bothered' with food or water, or shade, because we sure weren't bothered by any of those things. You'd really be amazed at how quickly the desire for a shot of hard liquor can turn into the desire for some nice lukewarm water. There's water in the desert. They use these harvesting things to draw it out, and condense it, and make it useful to us weak-skinned humans. I raided several on the way to our site. Kah said it was dishonorable (of course, he had scales, which don't leak water like a sieve), but he didn't stop me.
Kah liked the desert. Apparently something about being baked for hours and hours at a time appealed to him. He stripped naked (yeah, I know) and made me carry his gear along with my own. Trandoshans apparently don't have any cultural taboos about nudity. I could see why, they had virtually nothing external to worry about exposing. Well, whatever. Other species were wierd sometimes, and Kah was probably wierder than most of his species. At least someone was enjoying the outdoors.
It was hot, and bright, and dry. Kah had found a deep valley for us to take up temporary residence in, and it provided shelter from the suns most of the time, and was significantly cooler than the surrounding dunes. It was still hot. After I set up the portable vaporator kits, I choked down a dry travel biscuit and set up my shelter.
Some day I'm going to find the genius that thought it was a good idea to include a waterproof shelter for a desert survival pack. The waterproofing make the shelter almost airtight as well, and its dark color made it an oven. It was about as useful as an inflatable emergency raft but at least we didn't have one of them. I cut the tent to shreds on the second day, and used it to make a sunshield. I burned easily now, and even with the super-protective creams and pills the kit had, I was browning up almost as much as my lizard companion.
"Breathe, " he said, again, "and clear your mind." We'd been doing a lot of that. I could do it pretty fast now. Kah said that wasn't good enough, that when I was proficient (not an expert, just proficient) that I'd be living in that void of emotion more than I lived outside of it. I told him I wasn't sure it was a good way to live. He said not doing it was a good way to die, so we stopped talking about that. I just did what he told me. "And, release. Good." I was cleared.
It had helped, at first, to practice the meditation techniques. They kept my attention (or lack thereof) away from the memory of Petra, and it felt like muscles all over my body relaxed when I stopped thinking about her. As soon as I noticed it though, she came slamming back into my foremost thoughts. I could still see here eyes, glowing with the accusation of betrayal. I wanted to go to her, to show her...
Wham. I was slapped upside the head by a large reptilian hand. Kah seemed to think this was more effective than verbal reinforcement.
"Begin again. Breathe."
The protein wafers were boring after the first week. They were gone after the second. I'd taken to hunting with Kah in the 'mornings' (I have mentioned that I can't tell how the day/night cycle works on that bloody planet, haven't I?) and using the leftovers to attract more scavengers to eat by the next morning. Kah seemed to have forgotten about his clothing and gear altogether, and I never once caught him drinking from our 'still. Maybe he's really a droid, I thought. No, droids are more charming.
The days and nights filled with "breathe" and "release". I could blank my mind in a moment, and the flowing forms of the Teras Kasi came to me like thought. They were fluid and perfect. Finally, they started to mean something to me. Each one was a lesson, each told a story, each had a meaning. One told the story of a fool who had overextended himself, and struggled to return to balance. Another told of a hero beset on all sides by giant attackers, bent on crushing his life out. I moved from form to form, and somewhere in there I realized that I could do so effortlessly, and virtually without thought. I also realized I'd learned nothing new since coming to this heat-blasted oven of a schoolroom.
"Master Kah, " I began, "why do we endlessley repeat the same lesson? I'm getting nothing new out of this." This was during one of his rare 'rest' sessions.
"You take new knowledge from every breath. You are nearing proficiency in the opening forms now. You might soon be called 'capable' of meditation, if not fluent."
"I know, but I've learned nothing new about the Teras Kasi way; I never knew that much to begin with, but we keep doing forms I learned months ago!"
"Are you a complete fool? You are not here to learn how to be a Teras Kasi. You are here to learn what I can teach you about the Jedi."
"Then why are we doing all of these stupid breathing exercises? Why hours of meditation, and not enough water?" I hadn't meant to mention the water, but it was heartily ticking me off, being thirsty all the time.
"Now I am sure you are a fool. Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a cluttered mind? Do you think a Jedi teacher would tolerate a whining child? No, these things you must learn to go beyond, and these things I can teach you! Concentration. Discipline. Control. Focus. All these things you lack. You need these, and this is how I can teach them." He almost seemed like he was making his case to himself, not only to me.
"I have plenty of control."
"Nonsense, you are defined by your lack of control. A month ago you were wallowing in your own filth, drinking yourself to death. A year ago you were selling others the drugs to do the same. You are in control now?"
He had a point, I had been a bit out of whack. It was Petra that made it that way, at least recently, I thought glumly. And it was me that made her the way she was now. Stupidity, I told myself, I can't even make my thoughts go where I want them. I'm not here to complain about someone doing something to me, I'm here to learn how to make sure it doesn't happen again. No, that's not it either, I thought. I'm here to learn what I am, maybe even change what I am. When I know that, I'll be able to make that kind of failure less likely. I'll never be able to totally avoid it. Not a great and enlightening concept, I thought, but a start.
"I am in more control than I was."
"This is true, Dallet-cha. Now we will begin again. Assume your fighting stance, and attack my guard."
The next day 'dawned' (which means it got hot enough to cook the rat-meat under a lens instead of in an oven), and we did not resume our normal routine of breathing, running, hunting, baiting, breathing, and so forth. We hiked, in silence, to a pass that took us up and out of the valley. When we'd reached a kind of mesa overlooking our own campsite, Kah squatted down in his meditative posture. I'm in for a long morning, I thought to myself.
"The Force is everywhere, Dallet-cha." He spoke so softly and without preamble that it startled me. I dropped into a crouch before him. "Even the Teras Kasi know this. Children of all species know this, but adults usually disparage them of the notion." Disparage? I thought about getting him some Dosh-to-Basic vernacular datapads, but put the thought aside for later conversation.
"It connects all things, " he continued, "to one another, by flowing through and around them. It can be felt, and sensed. It violates the physical laws you spacers hold so dear." He paused, maybe to let the slow, sun-baked human figure that out. I took it as an invitation for comment, because I'm a smartass.
"Why can't I see it then, why can't it be measured?"
"What does the wind look like? What would you measure it with? How would you measure how much sand is in the desert? It is everywhere, it refuses to be counted."
"Then it's alive? It has a will?"
"It has many wills. I do not know if it is alive."
"So what about a Jedi's will, is it stronger?" His response was a wry chuckle. I think that's what it was anyway, Trandoshan-chuckles seem a bit more violent than the human analog.
"Jedi are among the most willful sentients the galaxy can ever know! They can be arrogant, prideful, egotistic. They are the most in need of control and discipline."
"Why, if they're so strong?"
"They have power, yes, but the power has its own will. Sometimes dark things roam the Force, and that will begins to corrupt the Jedi. If they have no control, it uses them as a tool, they way they would use it. Most of them do not survive, because the Dark Side is a hungry thing and does not care what it consumes. Sometimes though, it has enough cleverness to know when it has a tool of great value, and then that one becomes very terrible."
"Like Vader?"
"Yes, like Vader. He is a great funnel to the darkness, a great failure of self-control."
"Is that what happened to Petra then? She was a victim of this 'will' of the Force?"
"No, Petra was a victim to nothing but her own failure. She was weak when she needed to be strong, she was tempted when she needed to resist."
"How can you say that? How dare you criticize her? What do you know about this kind of thing? What do you know about being tortured and beaten and whatever else that piece of filth did to her? How dare you!" I stood upright, ready to leave. I didn't know where exactly to go, but 'away' sounded pretty good.
"I have killed failures like her before, and loved them every bit as much as I love her. Never have I had a Jedi as a student, and now I have two." I stopped, staring. Kah didn't have human emotions, especially not love. Probably a translation difficulty.
"She was a prized student, Dallet-cha. Just like you. And just like many other Jedi I have known, she has fallen."
"So, it's a Jedi problem now, right? Why would you care?"
"No, Dallet-cha. Long ago, it would have been a problem for the Council, or perhaps for my Teras Kasi brothers."
"If she's as far gone as you make it sound, Kah, she's going to be a big problem. The Jedi will have to come out of hiding for her."
"Dallet, there are no Jedi anymore. They are all gone, all of them. Vader has broken the balance of things."
"But Kah, the vids, the holo-news, there's Jedi everywhere, I mean, they're hiding on almost every planet... they're terrorizing- "
"The Jedi are dead, Dallet. The are dead and gone, murdered. There may be wilders, and untrained fools, but there are no more Jedi. That is why I risk teaching you myself, Dallet. I will teach you everything I know of them, which is scarcely more than nothing. I will teach you how to fight them, because at that I am a mamster. I will show you what must be done, and then you and I will go, student and master."
"Go where?" This was not sounding good. This was sounding long-term too, and I didn't like the idea of long-term in this heat. I didn't like the idea of another ten minutes in it, actually. It would be so much easier to walk away now, and I might even survive the walk back to civilization. I was in better shape from the training than I had been in years. I felt like I was rooted to the ledge though, because that damned Trandoshan was so still and determined.
"We will seek out Petra, and return her to the light. If we cannot, we will destroy her before she can upset the balance even further."
"Man, can we even do that? She looked pretty angry, and I've heard that those guys can kill you from a system away..." I tried to remember what I'd heard about Vader. None of it was pleasant. He was cold, ruthless, and always won. Always. And he usually killed everyone opposed to him in some spectacular and convincing way. "We could get killed trying to - "
"We will not try, Dallet. We will succeed or we will die."