STAR WARS

STARS OF DARKNESS

It is the Republic Dark Age. Lawlessness and chaos are widespread, as the Republic is on the verge of collapse. Naturally, it is a fine time for smuggling.

Two brothers, ELWOOD and NAYR ROUGE, are taking advantage of this. They work for Hueil the Hutt, a crime lord based on Faldos. They do their job exceptionally well.

Their latest job is to steal as much as they can from Weriot Stellum, a Gastrulan rival crime lord, in hopes of putting him out of business. They have just arrived at Gastrula, and are preparing to infiltrate Stellum's base…

Chapter 1: The Mission

"Well, here we are," Nayr stated. "Gastrula." He was rather short for a human his age, but one didn't notice when the only other sentient in the ship, his younger brother Elwood, was even shorter. It was not youth but genes that made the two short, as each was well into his twenties.

"Is that it? I was expecting a planet like this to be a little…bigger," Elwood remarked, frowning.

"Well, whatever. Cutting to the chase: the place is full to the top with guards, so marching in with guns blazing would not be smart," Nayr began.

"And if the place has that many guards, it's likely to have dozens cameras, so sneaking in isn't gonna work either," Elwood observed.

"Right." Nayr decided to let Elwood try and figure out the rest for himself, and thus said nothing more at this moment.

"So we'll need to find a way to disable all their security cameras, and do it quickly," Elwood concluded. "Preferably from the outside."

"Exactly. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut their power," Nayr grinned.

Elwood made a face. "But that way, I can't do any slicing…" he complained.

"True, but droids are self-powered. You could reprogram theirs to fight for us."

"Nah, that'd take too long. But who cares? It's a job. Let's go." At this, they both grinned that lopsided grin that only rogues, scoundrels, and pirates could grin.

Minutes later, their ship, the Twilight Eagle, touched down on the surface of the planet. They'd landed behind a short cliff, short enough to climb easily enough but tall enough to sufficiently hide the Eagle. Nayr had picked precisely the right spot, he told himself smugly. Soon, they were off the ship, with their weapons drawn, and on their way to the power generator. It was a short hike from where they'd landed, and when they were within sight of the generator, they hid beside the cliff as they advanced. However, one of the guards noticed them approaching.

"Outworlders! Shoot!" he shouted in Huttese.

The smuggler brothers softly cursed in unison. Elwood quickly thought up a serviceable bluff, pointed toward the direction they'd come from, and began to speak in Huttese: "Don't shoot! We are friends! Dangerous pirates are here! We tried to hide when they came!" It was very much a spur-of-the-moment fabrication, but it would work…

…Or so he hoped. Some of them were fooled, but most of didn't believe him. "Do you feel lucky, punk?" one said. Another told them, "You're in trouble now."

Following this, a chaotic firefight broke out, beginning with the three guards that saw through Elwood's lie moving into position and opening fire on Nayr. Whether they felt pressured or just weren't good aims was anyone's guess, but the fact remains that none of their shots touched him at first. Soon after this, though, Nayr sustained a hit that nearly made him drop his heavy blaster pistol. He gave a slight cry of pain, but it was hardly audible over the sounds of battle.

As the last guard fell by their guns, Elwood looked back at his brother and noticed his wound. "You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Nayr responded flatly with a slight grimace. "It's just a graze."

"All right. I got some slicing to do." Elwood put away his blaster carbine and began slicing the computer that controlled Weriot Stellum's power generator. As Elwood soon discovered, this computer could also be used to do much more. He caused quite a bit of chaos through the computer.

When he had finished, he told Nayr, "I decided not to cut their power when I could deactivate all their security cameras without doing that. I also got a map of the place and zapped a room full of guards."

"Good work," replied Nayr, who had been looting the bodies of their dead opponents. "Let's go."

A steep, winding trail had been crudely cut into the cliff nearby, which the brothers now ascended. It was not a long trail, but the steep incline left each slightly winded, so they rested briefly before continuing. It was about 200 yards from the top of the cliff to Stellum's base. When they arrived, they found ten guards stationed along the long side of the rectangular building. To minimize their chance of being seen, they moved to a shorter, less guarded side of the building. Not a single one of the guards noticed either of the brothers, and the two got inside without any trouble.

"So, Elwood, you saw a lot of the place through the cameras, didn't you? Which doors should we open?" Nayr whispered.

"Well, if I remember right, the doors next to us are full of guards, and while they're not likely to see us, even they would have difficulty not noticing if a door opened without any visible cause," Elwood cautioned.

"Then you'll set a mine in front of the door before opening it. When they come out to see who opened the door, they'll get blown up," Nayr grinned.

Elwood sighed, but didn't object. The explosion from the mine wouldn't kill them all, but the remainders could be dealt with easily enough. His brother was far too reckless, though he never seemed to pay for it, Elwood mused.

One of the guards must have seen the mine that Nayr placed, as the brothers heard the words, "No, no, wait, don't!" Either his companion didn't listen, or it was too late, because as the first of the guards exited the room, his body was blown into the door on the opposite side of the hallway, which he hit with a sickening crash, then fell. He didn't get up. The rest of the guards on this floor of the complex, about ten, presented little challenge for the brothers, although they did sustain a few wounds during the fighting.

After the skirmish, the pair put their weapons away and looted their opponents' bodies. They'd been in the business of smuggling and fighting for a long time now, and they knew that one of the easiest ways to earn extra money from doing a job they were going to be doing anyways was to sell their opponents' possessions. It may not have been nice, but it helped them, and dead men use no items.

And then, of course, there was the whole point of their mission to get to: stealing from Weriot Stellum. Every room in the hallway contained either metal boxes, plasteel cylinders, or footlockers, all storage units. Surprisingly, some of the footlockers were actually locked, but that didn't cause a problem; Elwood had a great deal of skill in bypassing security on doors and storage units. Eventually, they reached a room with three female Twi'lek slaves. "Don't kill us! Don't kill us!" they begged.

"Relax," Elwood told them. "We're here to free you. But we still got some guards to take care of, so stay here and we'll pick you up on our way out." Directly across the hall were more slave quarters, and this time the slaves were human women. Elwood gave them the same promise of freedom that he'd given to the Twi'leks. Following this, Elwood and Nayr split up again, and each went into a different one of the two elevators in the complex. Oddly, there were only two floors; why Stellum would want an elevator for only two floors was beyond the capacity of either of the brothers, but they didn't have time to just sit there and wonder about it.

When they reached the second floor, a band was on stage in front of the crime lord, as were three Twi'lek dancers dressed in skimpy costumes, although they were not currently performing. Two other bands were also in the room, but not playing at the moment. There appeared to be little of value in this room; however, Elwood didn't know why, but he was sure there must be something more here than met the eye right away. But what could it be? he wondered.

"What could what be?" Nayr whispered. Elwood blinked. Wait a minute, did I say that out loud? he thought. "Yeah. What's so strange about that?" his brother replied. Now Elwood stopped in his tracks. Something very strange was definitely going on. Somehow, Nayr was able to hear Elwood's thoughts. Elwood would ask him about that later. For now, they had to focus on the matter at hand. "Well, uh… I'm sure there's something of value in here, but I don't know what it could be," he explained quietly. "I guess we'll find out soon enough."

As they drew closer, they began to hear Weriot Stellum snapping at the dancers, "Give me something sultry, you whores! How about a strip dance?"

"But that wasn't one of the terms of our contract!" one protested.

"Well, it is now! Get to it!" he bellowed.

"Who do you think you are, to order me to do something like that!?" she shouted back.

Stellum glared at her. "You'll strip dance or my men will hold you at gunpoint while I strip you myself! Got it!?" he roared.

"…Yes, sir," the dejected Twi'lek answered. With that, the band began to play.

Just as the first dancer was about to begrudgingly remove the first part of her costume, one of Stellum's Trandoshan bodyguards noticed Nayr sneaking up behind the stage. "Sir! There's an intruder in this room!" he told his boss in Dosh.

"What!? Band, stop! There's an intruder!" Stellum barked. The guard that noticed Nayr ran toward him and began shooting at him with a blaster rifle, missing over his shoulder. The brothers began shooting at the bodyguards, who were a fair amount more agile than they looked. Their armor also made it harder to hurt them, but in the end even that couldn't save them.

At the sight of his bodyguards sizzling on the floor, Stellum put his hands up in surrender. "I say we kill him," Elwood suggested. "He's scum, and he'll keep being scum as long as he lives."

"You're right. Let's do it," Nayr agreed. Stellum was frozen with fear, making Elwood and Nayr's job easier. Elwood tried not to think about the fact that they were about to kill an unarmed opponent as he approached the crime lord. After a brief hesitation, they both shot him, and he fell off his chair and onto the floor. Behind his chair, they found a high-quality astromech droid, of the designation XR-K1.

"Go on, get out of here," Nayr ordered the bands and dancers, who got into the elevators and left. He then looted the bodies of the bodyguards, who, as he had thought, had some very nice equipment. They must have, he'd assumed, to be a match for himself and his brother.

As they left, Elwood 'woke up' the droid and told it, "Weriot Stellum is dead. You belong to us now. Don't worry, we're not bad people. We'll treat you well. Let's go." The droid beeped its consent, and followed them to the slave quarters. When they got there, they freed the slaves and led them to the Twilight Eagle, and soon afterwards left the planet.

As their ship was leaving the atmosphere, Elwood began to speak to Nayr. "Nayr, when we were in there, and you heard me talking, I wasn't actually saying anything out loud. I was thinking it."

Nayr frowned. "You…you're serious, aren't you?"

Elwood nodded. "Also, when we entered the room, even though XR was hidden behind the chair and the bodyguards and we couldn't see her, I somehow knew that there was something valuable in that room. I wasn't sure what it was at the time, but after thinking about it some more…"

Nayr shook his head. "No, we're not going to Coruscant. They'll know about us and how we're smugglers… Wait, no they won't. They cut off the HoloNet beyond the core worlds decades ago, and they can't afford to have law enforcement in the Outer Rim with that war they're fighting against the Sith. The answer is still no."

Elwood paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before he spoke again. "Do you want to just keep being a smuggler for the rest of your life, doing the dirty work for a sentient pile of lard who prospers through the suffering of others? That's not good enough for me! I want to do something with my life, you know? I wanna have a great mission. People like us were meant to live for so much more than what we are now. I mean, I know this was the only thing we could do as uneducated orphans on Corellia, but now we've got it made. We need to take hold of our own destiny, not just go with the flow. Fighting the Sith…"

"No," his answered firmly.

"Nayr—"

"Fighting the Sith directly is something other people can do," Nayr explained. "We have something we can do to help the Republic that few others could and nobody else would do: if we gain the support of the Outer Rim's gangsters in the Republic war effort, we can turn the tide of the war." Apparently, Elwood's miniature speech had convinced him that this was the right course of action.

"Then…"

"Yes, we'll go to Coruscant. We can send the slave women off with a thousand credits each to start their new lives of freedom, and then we'll head to the Jedi Temple with the proposal that if they'll train us, we'll earn the gangsters' support in the Republic war effort."

"Sounds like a plan," his brother smiled. As Nayr began to punch in the appropriate hyperspace coordinates, Elwood couldn't help but wonder what such an utterly different life would hold for them.