Nar Shaddaa's Open Orbit

It had been a long time to be sat on the chair on the transporter into Nar Shadaa, anyone watching might have thought that it had been a droid with the perfect stillness the female form rested in. Only her head occasionally moving as she scanned the room. In front of her sat a far more fidgety creature, an almost rat like near human that gave off an air of nervousness. A messenger that had afforded a bodyguard, unknown to the watchers it was not to protect him but the case he carried chained to his wrist.


She had wondered whether the chain had been added to stop Faahl dropping the case and running away, she had been told that the person they were meeting would have the key to remove the chain and if anything did happen to Faahl she should take the case by any means necessary and she it was delivered. She had no idea what it contained, she didn't even care, there had been creds up front and more would be sent afterwards should the mission be a success. She was really little more than babysitting. A few people nearby had commented on Faahl's smell, moving seats to distance themselves, apparently her helmet's filters were working well as she breathed clean if a little stale air through them. Through the viewport to the side the Smugglers Moon started to swing into view, they would be docking soon, she could feel the vibrations changing as thrusters moved the ship towards the landing point.


"Do you reckon we'll have any trouble? I don't like trouble. I just want to get rid of this case and get off of this rock."


His voice caused her to twist her head back around and stare straight at him, she could see him swallow slowly and the sweat beading on his head.


I don't see the future, I just deal with it when it comes.


Her words cut off all further conversation as she turned her head to scan the deck again.

Cuyan had been retrieved from a cantina in New Vertica, and had boarded Kolga's yacht, being escorted to his throne room to await his return. He maglocked his M5 to the small of his back and unsealed his helm, the mask opening to free his mouth. A serving droid wheeled over to take his order.
"Double narcolethe, and a Carababba cigarra. Hand-rolled."

The droid rolled off and brought him the drink and cigarra, extending a lighter device from one of it's servo arms. Cuyan puffed until it was ready, then waved the droid away. For his many hutt flaws, Kolga knew hospitality.

"You don't actually know that."
The ship rocked slightly as Nar Shaddaa's gravity weakened, bypassing the normal routes in favor of a backwater exit clearance. Na'an rocked with it, but her voice remained steady, if tired.
“Let me explain something to you, Caoimhin, since you’re clearly not thinking through this yourself," she said. "Your sister? You don't know her. She's been lying to everyone. Lying to us, lying to you, living the high life on a crime world while letting her 'beloved family’ think she died. Her actions of the last few hours, let alone the last seven years, speak to dangerous levels of carelessness at best.”

She stepped forward slightly, continuing before Cao could interrupt her and start making excuses. “At best. And the minute you see this liar, this criminally negligent mercenary of a sister again, your first instinct is to protect her by letting loose someone who finds enjoyment in flash-frying a bar’s worth of innocent bystanders.”

A fall of hair had fallen out of place; Na'an pushed at it with a tightly-balled fist. When her hand dropped, it rested this time not just above the lightsaber, but upon it. “I’ve learned, Cao. I’m not going to be a victim of the selfishness of Shans again. Not me, not Kent, not Adelle, and not. Leigh. Not ever.”

She drew herself up to her full height, straightening the exhausted curve of her spine. The effect was not as powerful as it had been on Babylon, but the shadow of it remained--not molten silver this time, but cold iron. “You’ll be staying in the secondary quarters. Locked, and separate from Elly, who I'll make sure is stabilized in the medical bay. Or you’ll both be staying in the airlock, with my finger on the button. Do you understand.”

Almost as soon as Kent had somehow managed to get the woman on the cot, Adelle curled involuntarily. Her face twitched, eyes moving rapidly beneath her placid eyelids. Blood. So much blood. Her fingers spasmed, the muscles in her hands and arms tense. Her breathing was too shallow for her to be getting any kind of rest, despite sleeping like the dead. How could someone so small have so much blood? She fumbled with the fragments of bone and sinews of muscle, blood running down her hands, even as the beetles started tearing her own skin apart. She could still see Morgan raising her hands, hear her screams. Adelle screamed, trying to piece body parts back together, calling on every ounce of the Force. But at this point, she couldn't tell which pieces of flesh were Morgan's and which were hers.

A tear trickled down her cheek as she moaned softly, the freighter lifting from Nar Shaddaa's gravity well and slipping into hyperspace.

Leigh, her hands resting lightly on the cockpit's main controls, watched Kent go with a blank expression, although no so blank as to erase her face entirely. She had not meant to make the girl cry with her silence, even if her childish bluster and overreaching was beginning to annoy. She would have to remember that by all indications, teenagers were more sensitive than other humans, even if they weren't inexplicably homeless and among what would be, by many accounts, terrifying strangers. Her lack of acknowledgement had probably been construed as outright disgust with Kent's efforts, rather than the distraction of a CPU whirring under one too many tasks and focusing on getting a very old ship offworld safely. 

From the open door, she could detect the faint sniffles of a human beginning to cry. 


Unknown. Until half an hour ago his status was confirmed deceased.

Even Leigh's internal comlink data was brusque. KR-04 had never been anything more than the worst of droidkind, and considering the circumstances she didn't have the time to deal with the nasty implications of his apparent revival. She logged the IP address of the communique's initial contact, then cut the connection. 


****


Na'an watched Cao's door click shut. Whether he had locked it was uncertain from this angle, but that could be handled. The threat was neutralized, and thus Vidalu Na'an could almost let herself breathe. 

Almost. 

The woman's body at her feet had curled inward slightly into a fetal position, her breathing fast and shallow as a small pool of blood formed under her face. Eliana Shan was easily half a foot taller than Na'an, if not more, and probably had considerably more weight to boot. Na'an have to figure out how to drag her into the med bay and secure her to a cot long enough to stop the bleeding.

An easy enough task, when said, and easy at any other time. That being said...Na'an passed a hand over her face, wiping at the sweat beading there, pressing at the temples that seemed to throb in time with her heartbeat.
"Easy, girl," she said to herself. "Just a little further. Put on a strong front. Medbay's where the pills are. Just get her there."

She kneeled to reach for the body, to roll it into her arms, but only got partway before her knees buckled. She slammed into the storage bay floor with a yelp, rolling into a sitting position and breathing hard between curses. 

Nope. This wasn't happening on her own, not without what was in the medbay. Elly was dead weight, and she was still too jittery to manage the kind of motor control she'd need to both hoist Elly and get her up to the medbay. 

"Stupid," she said quietly, although who exactly the word's target was was unclear. She swallowed, then yelled loud enough to be heard in the cockpit. "Kent, I said I needed you, where the frack did you GO."

Na'an winced at the girl's voice, her good eye snapping shut, and took a deep breath. "Two things, first" she said, "And then to talk. The secondary quarters are up the stairs over there. Make sure the door leading to them is locked; the lock code's '7-4-6-delta'."

Without opening her eye, she tilted her head in the other direction. The other eye whirred gently, rolling upwards to look at the rooms above them. "Nearby to that's a small medbay. In the wall cabinet is a....are two bottles. One small and white, one large brown one. Grab both, and an eyepatch from the drawer, and bring 'em down here."

The eye rolled back to look at Kent. "You can do that?"

"It'll pass. Always does."
Na'an held out a hand for the white bottle. When she felt the cool plastic hit her palm, she immediately unscrewed the bottle, shaking a pair of greenish-white tablets into her other hand. She swallowed them dry, breathing deeply and keeping her eye closed as she waited for the painkillers to take effect. 

Her good eye cracked open again, casting a cool grey regard on the girl hunched anxiously over her, the larger bottle still in hand. "That one's yours," she said, her mouth quirking slightly, and she bent to shake more of the white bottle's contents into her hand. "You're malnourished. You'll need to take vitamin supplements until you start eating properly."  

Na'an's landing had brought her close to Elly's face; she focused on crushing the tablets one by one into powder between her fingers, pushing the fragments behind the woman's teeth where they would dissolve.   Somewhere around the third and final pill the task became easier; her hands had stopped shaking. 

"When we get where we're going, you'll want to have your strength up."  She exhaled a great whoosh of air, and pushed herself to her feet, testing her arms and the steadiness of her knees. "And I'll want to have her strapped down somewhere we can have an eye on her. Wanna help?"