Desperate Times/Part 11

Had it not sat directly astride the Hydian Way, Aldayr Nikodon reflected, Skorrupon would have been just another Mid Rim backwater. Its lucky geography, however, gave it an infusion of trade enough to counter its meager and long-exhausted natural resources. Moreover, though only a true rube would have called it a major world, it was the last planet on the Hydian with any real development before that massive hyperlane crossed into the lawlessness of the Outer Rim, where unfortunate travelers might count themselves to encounter nothing worse than pirates.

The capital city, Aldayr and Narasi had discovered, was named Skorr-upon-Draxxakkar. No one had been able to tell him whether the planet's name was a condensed version of the capital's or the capital's was a backronym for the planet's, though he suspected the former; like many Mid Rimmers, Skorrupon's natives seemed hardworking and dedicated, but unimaginative. They did not seem the type to host a Sith Lord, and those he had questioned were obviously tense about Darth Saleej's encroachment on nearby space.

A brief query of public records in a police facility had showed no criminal reports regarding Mirialans. That had been Aldayr's task; sending a Zygerrian into decent society would have gotten the two Jedi themselves a tail, as Narasi had pointed out with a grimace. And while Skorrupon boasted three spaceports the planet over, one was so small it only took private charters, and another was located well out in Skorrupon's desert outback, connected to outlying settlements by a series of mag-levs like spokes on a wheel. Alecto, they had decided, would not try to chance escape on either of those, but lurk in Skorr-upon-Draxxakkar until…what?

"She might've run out of fuel," Narasi had mused their first day onworld.

"She could've refueled in an hour. By the time word got back to the Empire that she was here, she'd have already been back to Saleej herself."

"Maybe her ship's damaged. Maybe something went wrong."

Between the Republic's attempt to blockade the routes out of the Core from Anaxes and the fact that Alecto and the Dark Vanguard had apparently been both in league and open to betraying one another, there had certainly been plentiful opportunities for something to go wrong. Moreover, it fitted with their theory that the Mirialan was hiding in the capital. So they had secured themselves a docking bay and begun their search only to realize that neither of them knew what kind of ship Alecto owned. They had worked their way through Skorr-upon-Draxxakkar's spaceport, finding repair bays and asking questions. When they had sensed that repair workers might be open to a friendly conversation or the gentle persuasion of Republic credits, Aldayr had struck up chat after chat while Narasi lurked out of sight; when officials had seemed more susceptible to intimidation Narasi had handled the questions, throwing back her hood to reveal her Zygerrian features and squeeze her targets until they ran dry.

"You're good at this," she had commented after Aldayr had spent the better part of an hour talking mechanics with a pair of Besalisk laborers.

""Well, Mali is," Aldayr had admitted. "He'd strike up a conversation with a Toydarian and out-bargain it half the time, too."

"There's a skill I haven't seen demonstrated all that much."

Narasi had smiled for a moment before the expression collapsed in on itself and she sank into a troubled look of contemplation. Mali had wondered whether she was continuing to blame herself for Tirien's predicament, or simply envisioning what he would say when he found out what they had done. Their first night on Skorrupon, when they had bunked down in the Second Chance and Narasi had fallen asleep, Aldayr had lain awake thinking the same thoughts about Mali. Had he realized where Aldayr was going? What would he say if he caught up to them before they had Alecto in custody?

Aldayr tried to banish these thoughts, to focus on the here and now, but by their third day Narasi had either caught up to where he was or could simply contain herself no longer.

"If this was the only lead on Alecto, they must've figured it out by now," she fretted. The day was overcast and threatening rain, and they both seized upon the excuse to pull up their hoods as they left the spaceport. "We need to step up the pace."

"We have to be careful," he argued as they wove through a small crowd of beings heading to work with bleary expressions. "If we get too conspicuous, word might get to her before we find her. There are half a million people in this city; if we spook her, it could take years to find her."

"Get me within a kilometer of her and I'll sense her," Narasi vowed, but her eyes belied her tension. "Besides, you got that lead."

"From a mechanic who thinks he saw a Mirialan complaining about a broken ship, but couldn't tell me which ship was hers."

"But she asked him for directions. We've got a place to start."

And so they crossed the Draxxakkar River, through the riverside industrial district and into a darker part of the capital. The hospitality industry that had sprung up to cater to spacers crossing through the Mid Rim down the Hydian clearly did not extend this far; Aldayr thought this part of the capital must have dated to an earlier time in Skorrupon's history, when it still had resources of its own to exploit. Fewer mag-lev trains ran on graffitied rails, and Aldayr noticed far more non-Humans than he had anywhere but the spaceport. He thought Narasi had noticed as well; she lowered her hood for a while, but after the sixth being crossed the street to avoid her, she put it back up.

"This is the neighborhood," Aldayr muttered, his eyes on his wrist transponder.

"Split up again?" Narasi asked, facing him under a flickering holo sign. "Or stick together? If she's here, we may not have a lot of warning when we find her."

"If word gets out that we're on her tail, she might slip us," Aldayr countered. "Split up and we cover twice as much ground."

"We can't beat her alone," she said, "and we have to take her alive."

"Alive doesn't mean intact," Aldayr reminded her. "If you find her first, comm me, sneak up behind her, and cut her leg off or something."

Narasi swallowed, but in the end they agreed to split up, synching their wrist comms for emergency signals. Aldayr trawled for rumors through bar after bar while Narasi swept the other side of the street, but none of it was of use. Yes, he had seen a Mirialan…Mirialans were the pink-skinned pleasure people, right? Then No, I haven't, and you can take your nosy ass out of my bar, boy. And of course, memorably, No, no, no Mirialans, but for two hundred credits I could set you up with a nice Theelin who'll do anything you can imagine… Aldayr had almost asked whether the Theelin could tell him where Darth Alecto was, but mastered himself at the last moment.

In a weather-beaten bar backing a warehouse district, Aldayr sidled up to the bar, studying the patrons from the corner of his eye and stretching out with the Force until the bartender approached. A buxom, four-armed alien, she shook a cocktail shaker in her lower hands while her upper hands tightened her ponytail. Summoning up a smile with what looked like effort, she asked, "What can I get for you?"

"Got the ale for a Corellian Bloodruster?"

She raised her eyebrows above a spreading grin. "I think I could manage something." As her four hands started grabbing ingredients, she asked, "Offworlder?"

Aldayr sensed that some manners from a Human patron might be novel, so he gave the woman a charming smile. "You too, I see. Corellian."

"Codru-Ji. Left home to live the good life offworld." She smirked as she picked up a bottle of Corellian ale with one hand and flipped it to another without looking. "You?"

"Oh, it's good to roam the spacelanes. The bigger the galaxy, the sweeter the homecoming."

They chatted about her homeworld, which was called Munto Codru, while she whipped together the Bloodruster faster than Aldayr had ever seen. Aldayr took the opportunity when she turned away to wave a hand in her direction. She had gotten comfortable enough for a mischievous smile and slid the drink down the bar; Aldayr caught it with his flesh hand and drew it to his lips with unerring reflexes. "So what brings you to Skorrupon, Corellian?"

"I'm looking for someone."

The Codru-Ji appraised him, then leaned forward on her upper hands, her lower arms crossed under her breasts. She winked. "I'm someone. And I'm off my shift in half an hour."

Aldayr smiled, leaning on the elbow of his cybernetic arm. She had pretty eyes, and her pointed ears framed her face in a way that gave an attractive slant to her narrow jaw. His imagination drifted down an avenue of intriguing possibilities…but then he felt, faintly, a pulse in the Force that he identified with Narasi, and it brought him back to reality. "I might be delayed a bit more than half an hour," he confessed. "I'm actually looking for a Mirialan woman. Green-skinned, with black tattoos…"

He started to raise the Bloodruster to his lips, but lowered it again; his words had wrought a curious effect. The Codru-Ji's smile evaporated, and she slowly stood back up. Aldayr frowned. "Not like that, there's no reason to be jealous. She's definitely not my type."

The bartender gave a little exhalation, like she had meant to force a laugh but couldn't quite get there. "No, no it's…it's okay. I, uh…I think I've seen someone like that at…at the bar across the street…"

She smiled, but having so recently seen the genuine article, Aldayr could appreciate how fake this expression was. He set his drink down with finality. "What aren't you telling me?"

Her anxiety peaked to fear in the Force. "Look, I just…I saw someone at the bar across—"

Aldayr waved a hand and commanded, "You'll tell me what you know."

"I'll tell you what I know," she whispered, looking terrified. "They told me—if anyone asked, I was supposed to—"

Aldayr's wrist comm chimed a series of low, rapid beeps: the emergency signal he had agreed on with Narasi. Slapping it to turn it off, he gave the Codru-Ji one furious look. As she fell back, looking frightened and apologetic at once, he bolted out of the bar. It had started to drizzle, and a little puddle was forming in a pothole. He reached beneath his longcoat and laid his gloved hand on the long hilt of his lightsaber as he pushed open the bar door with his left.

The patrons of this bar were in quiet conversation with each other, and the Human bartender was whistling while he set a stool upright, but Aldayr was not fooled. Tension was thick in the room, danger coalescing quickly. He swept the room with his eyes and caught a few furtive gazes too slow to look away. He could not feel Narasi clearly, and he crossed the room to the bartender, who straightened and shifted one leg back.

"Disturbance?" Aldayr asked coldly.

"Hmm? No, just a careless drunk."

Aldayr glanced around. His eyes lingered on a man with one hand on his leg, his teeth gritted and his fingers clenched into the muscle of his thigh, and another who seemed to be resting his cheek in his palm except for the fact that blood was leaking from the bottom of his fingers. Sinking himself into the Force, he demanded, "Where's the Zygerrian?"

The tension started to rise, and Aldayr tightened his hand on his lightsaber hilt as the bartender snorted. "Don't serve that scum here. Now are you going to order something, or are you—"

Aldayr waved his hand, and one man toppled into his fellow who was clutching his leg; the second man screamed, and when he fell out of his chair, his broken leg flopped at a stomach-churning angle. The patrons all sat up straight and reached for blasters, and Aldayr saw the claw marks on the bloodied man's cheek.

He backhanded the bartender and drew his lightsaber, but sensed in time that it was the wrong tool for the task. Anchoring himself firmly in reality, letting the here and now connect him to the Force, he took the first two blue stun rings without passing out, though his vision blurred. He knew he could not take many more, and thrust out his hands; both occupied tables blasted into their occupants, scattering them around the bar floor. The bartender produced a blaster of his own, but Aldayr shifted his lightsaber hilt to his real hand, caught the bartender's wrist with his cybernetic one, and drove his forearm into the countertop so hard it snapped like a twig.

Aldayr let him get through his first few bloodcurdling shrieks, then seized the man by the throat with his gloved hand, digging the emitter of his lightsaber under the bartender's armpit. The stun rings had left him a little disoriented, but he understood clearly that this man stood between him and Narasi, who might be in mortal danger—might, even now, be dueling Alecto. "A bacta shot will fix that in a day or two. Tell me where the Zygerrian is or I'll cut your whole arm off."

"You're a…Jedi…you wouldn't!" the man rasped, face screwed up in pain.

"Wouldn't I?" Aldayr asked coldly, and pressed the saberstaff's power stud.

The snap-hiss was drowned out almost instantly by renewed screams. "That's the biceps!" Aldayr shouted over him; the bartender tried in vain to wrench what was left of his arm away from the searing plasma. "Bacta might even heal that if you keep the bone. Three…two…"

"THERE!" the bartender shrieked, flopping his remaining good arm behind the bar. "THROUGH THERE YOU SON OF A—"

Aldayr deactivated the blade and uppercut the man; the bartender slumped, unconscious, smoke curling from his maimed arm. Aldayr looked at the wound and felt a moment of disquiet, a sort of spiritual nausea. Then he remembered Narasi was in danger and charged around the bar and into the storeroom, where he found broken bottles and spilled alcohol, as well as the unmistakable scorch marks of a lightsaber blade where it had gouged the walls. A dead body lay on the floor; whether killed here or hastily stuffed out of sight to make the main bar less suspicious, Aldayr neither knew nor cared. He crossed the room at a jog and shouldered through the back door.

Some combination of instinct and momentum saved him; he sprang from his jog into a diving roll right over the red blade cutting at his knees. Rolling up to his feet, he activated both blades and whirled into a duel with a black-masked Sith. The light rain sizzled on their blades as they fought, Aldayr coming in hard and furious, using both blades in a constant attack rather than risk being put on defense with his long-handled weapon. He managed to score a hit on the Sith's left shoulder, and the man leapt back.

"Help me!" he called.

Aldayr chanced a look and saw other beings a hundred meters away, some tough-looking customers in spacer garb he took for mercenaries, others wearing Sith black and carrying lightsabers. A Hiitian and two smaller Near-Humans were carrying Narasi into a freighter; judging by the slump of her body and the loll of her head, she was unconscious.

"NARASI!" Aldayr roared, but she did not stir. Two Sith and several mercenaries, however, started his way. Turning back to his attacker, he pursued the Sith, who was now trying to fend him off one-handed. Levering their blades down, he backhanded with his cybernetic arm so hard that he shattered the Sith mask and felt bone crunch beneath. Blood was foaming over the man's exposed mouth and from the one eye that was visible under the broken mask; as the Sith gurgled, Aldayr drew his lightsaber back and ran him through the heart.

He had no time to savor his victory, because the other two Sith were on him, and he had to spin both blades rapidly to defend himself, lunging when he could to drive them back. The stun rings had slowed him down a bit, and he had expended considerable energy to overwhelm his first attacker. The Sith seemed to sense it, because they constantly shifted to bracket him and come from both sides, taking it in turns to attack his back when he tried to chivvy them both in front of him. The mercenaries ringed the fight, calling encouragement to the Sith and rude names at Aldayr.

Finally, with a five-rotational overhead twirl of both blades, Aldayr managed to force both Sith to one side. He had just taken a pause to catch his breath when he realized he had been suckered. He stayed conscious through the first stun shot in the back, but staggered; the second drove him to his knees. He got one foot back under him, tried to push to his feet, and almost fell on his face. The mercs jeered louder than ever as the Sith advanced.

Groaning, Aldayr took his lightsaber back in two hands. One Sith stopped and swiped a hand, and boxes flew off a stack. Aldayr punched one out of the air with his cybernetic arm, but the impact twisted his body around and the second box hit him in the chest. He lay on his back, blinking against the rainwater splattering his face. His flesh hand opened and closed on nothing but his palm; he had lost his lightsaber. Rolling over, coughing and feeling his ribs aching, he tried to push up.

One Sith, seeing him disarmed, had come close enough to kick him in the ribs, and Aldayr cried out in pain. He slumped back down, but the Sith kicked him again anyway. After the third kick Aldayr felt anger alongside his pain—was it not enough to win? Were they determined to humiliate him before they killed him? When the Sith kicked a fourth time Aldayr was ready and swiped with his right arm; he was too groggy for full power or anything like aim, but he felt confident a leg bone had cracked. He was rewarded with cursing for a moment before he heard the familiar wa-zews of stun rings and blacked out.