Prison! That lowest of lows!
One is sent there for that greatest and worst cliché in one's life, "rock bottom." The galaxy is full of prisons and prisoners, and a Galactic Empire, unsurprisingly, finds it even easier to find prisoners and fill prisons than epochs long past.
The Republic that lasted tens of thousands of years is ashen. The Empire seems to stretch ahead forever, having achieved total victory, domination over all the worlds of the Republic and then some. There are sweeps every day, across thousands of planets, where innocents and suspects alike are rounded up in droves. They go to camps, mines, stockades, cells, and all manner of efforts of the galactic prison-industrial complex that chews up living things and spits out raw materials for ships, for weapons, for the war.
That such an inexorable mighty thing as this galactic machine might, in fact, be undone by its very size and weight seems counterintuitive. Yet, we find, time and again, that the great wheels and gears that turn for evil and destruction and consumption, by virtue of the chaotic nature of the universe, might at some juncture fail, or turn just slowly enough, or briefly breakdown for just a short enough moment, that their turning might instead open the gap for something…good.
This sentiment was always true in the abstract, but never had it been more ably demonstrated than to be one man, one pilot, a hero on his first combat mission, to ride against the behemoth Death Star and with one brave stone's throw against the giant, the whole Imperial enterprise is ruined, and the Empire trembles.
It is one month since the Battle of Yavin, and the Empire furiously roars at its wounding. The crackdowns and security sweeps are multiplied tenfold. After all, what does it matter, a few million civilians versus a few hundred million, if the Empire itself is at stake?
And yet, the same wheel turns in this massive bureaucracy as it did in those thousands of chambers in the Death Star. At least one thing must go against the plan, at least one must go against the design.
And in that thing: salvation!
Which, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective, can be a little hard to swallow at first, for salvation comes in many shapes and sizes. Judge things by their size, one should not.
Thus, in the depths of a prison ship that comprised just one small segment in this Imperial prison machine, there were two prisoners in a cell together. Alone at first, they had been moved into the same cell together as the prison ship appeared to pick up more and more prisoners as it moved along its route.
At first, the two prisoners did not speak to one another. One was an adult male Toydarian, still youthful but an adult nonetheless; and the other, a human male, a stocky elder man with a military bearing, but shorn of his uniform and dignity, it seemed.
Eventually, the Toydarian introduced himself as Soga. The human introduced himself as Gram.
By far the more reticent of the two to speak was Soga. Gram, not knowing much of Toydarian physiology, couldn't even guess the young Toydarian's age, and so Gram trafficked in some storytelling of the Clone Wars and Gram's own successes as a young sailor and captain in the Republic Navy, to see if he could invoke such memories in his cellmate.
Soga had little to say, and Gram did not press the issue. They were in the cell for almost two weeks together; both guessed the other had done time in prison before, by virtue of the other's discipline in this confinement. In fact, neither had. They were both simply scared.
They did not know to where they were headed, and the few communal times at mess hall with the other prisoners gave no clues. The guards aboard were brutal, it was heard, and so pressing one's luck was not advised.
But, as has been stated and promised, at some point, the machine breaks down.
After the morning meal, Soga and Gram were deposited back in their cell by the guards. Earlier, they had heard rumors: their ship was travelling through Hutt space to their destination, the spice mines of Kessel. Of all the prisons and grueling laborious end points in the Imperial prison system, this one was judged to be the worst.
The prospect made both Soga and Gram even less talkative. They contemplated their own demise in silence. The color seemed nearly drained from Soga entirely, his natural colorful teal skin and yellow bellow patterning softening, to pale eggshell-like hues.
Their cell was a five-by-five meter room, with two metal cots, and a deep hole in the corner for biological functions, connected to some vacuum pipe to the larger system. There was no door; the fourth wall to the cell block was instead a flat, glowing neon-orange shield, thin and translucent but lethal to life. It hummed along merrily, occasionally growing brighter as small power surges moved through the prison ship like waves.
It had been argued that some shields like this were meant as torture devices for their prisoners, for aliens sensitive to light and electromagnetic projections like shields. In practice, it was simple Imperial overengineering and a lack of foresight.
Soga, for example, was unaffected, but the orange light played on his skin and cast odd-colored shadows on him. His species' noted short trunk nose hung droopily, even more so than usual since being imprisoned, and he held his round belly with one three-fingered hand.
Gram eyed him warily.
"You gonna be sick?" he asked Soga in a dim voice.
"No…just thinking this is the last time I'll feel 'well'," Soga observed soggily. "Kessel will make this place look like a holiday cruise."
"Best chance to get out is when they transfer us," Gram hissed. Soga, surprised at the desperation layered in Gram's voice, turned to face him.
Gram was sitting on a cot while Soga sat on the floor, cross-legged, his diminutive Toydarian wings folded behind him. Gram thus looked down at him slightly as Gram sat on the cot. Short and stocky, Gram had big legs to match his large upper body and tapped his huge boots along as he pondered his next thought. The bigger, older human was filling out his prison uniform admirably but, as Soga noted, less and less, as their prison meals were meager. They were all losing weight.
"I don't know if you're the trusting type, but I don't intend to die in the spice mines," Gram posited. He rubbed a short white prison beard as he spoke; he had short and sharp white whiskers nearly all over his face, and a scalp to match.
He crossed his arms and leaned forward a bit to try to imbue his words a little more seriousness. Soga was convinced, for the moment, at least, to speak candidly.
"Me either," Soga grunted quietly. Both were afraid of listening devices, but there comes a point where the words are worth the risk. "I get the feeling you were an Imperial."
"Yeah," Gram grunted irritably.
"Didn't go so well," Soga clucked.
"Yeah," Gram repeated, re-crossing his arms and clacking his boots. Soga awkwardly scratched his nose; Gram got the sense sometimes there was some cultural significance or tic that he was missing. "What's your excuse then, Toydarian?"
Soga hesitated for a moment. The distrust was palpable, but desperation makes good company.
"That's Soga to you…" Soga tried to chuckle. He cleared his throat. "The 'king' of Toydaria is a usurper. His name is Galaros." Soga reflexively looked away from Gram at the shield door for a moment, just in case there was a guard passing by.
"He's been purging the supporters of the old king, Tartarus, for years. I left long ago, but…got picked up in a sweep trying to leave the spaceport in Nar Shaddaa," Soga finished with a shrug.
Gram nodded slowly.
"You were a supporter of his then? The good king?"
"Good King Tartarus, First of His Name…yes," Soga answered wistfully. He did not make eye contact as he finished speaking it aloud. Gram could sense his anguish clear enough.
Before he could speak in response, though, they heard the marching of boots. A small panic swept them both, especially Gram, who wondered for a moment what indictment he had just predicated with Soga in speaking aloud.
To their surprise, it was two stormtroopers, not prison guards. They arrived in front of the cell shield and pressed a switch on the other side, by which the shield vanished at once. From practice, Soga and Gram knew to push to the back of the room. There would be no getting by both stormtroopers, and they knew from having walked the hall before that this cellblock was locked down, with a huge blast door guarding the lone exit down the lone hallway.
One of the stormtroopers was carrying something: a cube roughly a half-meter squared on all sides, black and traced with engravings and different ports and slots that readily identified it as a droid. The "top" appeared to have a circular retracting cover of some sort that might be containing something inside.
The stormtrooper threw it inside with an unceremonious metallic crash. The thin plating underneath Soga and Gram's feet reverberated.
"What damn thing is this?" Gram spat, fright and fight mixing in his spittle at the surprise.
"Think we can fit one more in here?" the one stormtrooper who had thrown the droid spoke now. His voice was gruff but also tinny, coming through the helmet.
"What—" Gram tried to respond, but the stormtrooper glanced at his compatriot stormtrooper, and Gram realized he hadn't been talking to him.
"Yeah, these ones won't pick a fight with him. Boy, though, I hope we get there soon. Cleaning up UX5 block was awful," the second stormtrooper, still male but younger-sounding, chimed back to his comrade.
"It's gotta get worse before it gets better, that's what they say," the first stormtrooper said. He walked off beyond the cell back up the hallway, out of view of Soga and Gram.
"Running out of space?" Soga spoke, trying to sound authoritative. The younger stormtrooper remained in view, blocking the open shield and exit to the cell. His rifle was in his arms and readied.
"Got a friend I want you to meet," the stormtrooper said flatly as he looked at them both. Soga felt more dread piling in his stomach.
"Are we the trash cell now?" Gram protested, taking a step forward from the back wall. The stormtrooper instantly pointed the blaster rifle at him.
"Don't…do that again," he chimed unconcernedly. Gram bitterly remarked to himself that this was likely what they had called in the service a "blood rifle," the kind of trooper in it just for the kills.
Gram stepped back to the wall again, hands raised. Soga pressed himself back as well, wings and hands splayed out. He crouched slightly to make himself a smaller target, a helpless reflex.
"Just be glad the captain likes our block officer and hasn't given us more of you scum," the younger stormtrooper badgered them. As he spoke, they heard footsteps coming around the corner.
It was the gruff-sounding stormtrooper, but that wasn't what caught Soga and Gram's attention.
A six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound Trandoshan hunter came around the corner with the stormtrooper and was gently nudged into cell, or as gently as one can in such a situation. The Trandoshan was youthful, by their standards, but appeared to Soga and Gram as humongous and frightening. His horns were particularly bulbous, and he had a chaotic striping of sorts of mottling greens and browns on his exposed skin—they did correctly assume it to be male.
"Thanks for the other thing," the gruff stormtrooper spoke to the Trandoshan as he uncuffed him, and removed off what looked like glass slips on the Trandoshan's massive reptilian claws. "Don't kill these ones though, or the lieutenant will space you."
The Trandoshan growled in a low rumble.
"…Points." He clearly spoke Galactic Basic on some level, but his voice roiled like a thunderstorm, throaty and harsh. He had gigantic shoulders and arms to support his huge hands. On some level, Gram had no idea why the Trandoshan didn't rip the two stormtroopers apart—he could probably take them.
"Yeah, but no points if you go out an airlock, right? You'll get a chance to make your case on Kessel, bonehead," the gruff stormtrooper chided, and his comrade chuckled now.
"Ha-ha…bonehead, I get it," the young stormtrooper chuckled and coughed with a headshake.
"Yeah," the gruff one laughed.
"You think of that one yourself?" the young one asked as he kept laughing. He slapped the switch and the shield closed once more, an orange square of light holding them all in prison, with the stormtroopers on the outside looking in.
"I did, actually. I was just saying to this girl at the mess line yesterday…" the gruff one began to regale his younger comrade with a tale of his sociological prowess as the two stormtroopers walked out of view back down the cellblock, leaving Soga and Gram alone with a giant.
The Trandoshan turned around to face them, pressed against the wall, his huge toothy face illuminated by the orange shield, revealing a giant grin of teeth each as big as a human index finger. He gave a short snort and then cracked his knuckles. It sounded like he popped each one out and back in again completely; it was that loud.
"Let's cut to this chase," Gram took a step forward with feigned confidence. "Should I be worried?"
He stared down the Trandoshan for a long moment, one arm drooping at his side, with the other on his hip. He felt confident in the posture, even though once upon a time it would've largely been driven by the presence of an actual weapon on said hip. Still, for a moment, it seemed to Soga as if Gram stepped into a posture of authority.
The Trandoshan snorted again, and then snarled a response in a snakelike voice.
"…No," he grunted.
"What's your name?" Gram challenged him.
"…Sadissk," the Trandoshan rumbled. The "s" sound dragged on like fuse as he spoke.
"Well, Sadissk, how's prison life treating you?" Gram inquired. He intoned overt politeness, which was sarcastic, but he realized as he did it that Sadissk might not be the sarcastic type.
"It…sucks!" he hissed, and then started laughing, which looked to Gram like he might be choking on some small bone in his throat. "No good food, no good drink, nothing to hunt! Imperials don't do me favors, but they act like they do!" He snorted again, the loudest yet.
"Do you want to get out of here?" Gram whispered. At this, Soga stood up, realizing Gram's ambitious play. He felt stirred but even more frightened. This could escalate quickly.
"Yes!" Sadissk responded with a long rolling "s".
"Then pick up that trash there and hold it against the shield. It might short out and open the door," Gram commanded, pointing at the broken cube droid on the floor right near Sadissk.
Soga's eyes went wide. He had forgotten all about the droid. Was this plan actually plausible? He didn't know enough to know the answer.
Gram, on the other hand, had already found Sadissk was the type of direct personality that enjoyed directions. The droid was already in both hands, and Sadissk overhead slammed it into the shield and pressed it against the solid resistance of the energy shield.
A half-second past where a whirl of sparks splashed out from the points of contact between the shield and the droid. In the cell, they were showered with heat and light and tiny pieces of charred metal that yielded to the shield, flaking away like burned leaves.
After the moment passed, the shield overloaded and popped, sending Sadissk noisily onto his rear with a thud as he fell down, and the droid sailed over his head and off to the right, clanking off the walls in the corner and then back toward the center of the room. Soga and Gram reflexively ducked when it happened to avoid being hit.
Gram thought he heard a ringing in his ear at first, but he realized as the seconds ticked by it was the droid, screaming alarm beeps that gradually petered away into silence. Sadissk was licking his wounded hands, bloodied from the event as some of the skin near his knuckles had burned off.
The droid kicked for a moment, like there was something pinging around inside it. The three of them stood back a good distance. Gram wondered if it was about to explode.
Instead, the lights on the front of it lit up in a swirl of colors and alternating square buttons. One of the port covers retracted to reveal some sort of plastic grille covering, which Gram in the next moment understood to be the speaker and microphone, as the machine uttered its first words in a calm, deferential, butler-like Imperial accent.
"Good after-noon, my masters, a pleasure to be present. My name is R1-D6. How can I facilitate your desires?"
"Uh…" Gram was speechless. Soga, however, stepped up to find his footing. He fluttered with wings a bit and came to stand near Sadissk and Gram, the three of them now in a semi-circle in front of the droid.
"R1-D6, a pleasure to meet you," Soga greeted with a royal-sounding accent of his own. Gram found the affect overbearing, but it seemed important to play along, and it worked, at any rate.
"My gentle sir, a pleasure, a pleasure, how can I assist?" R1-D6 chanted.
"How…exactly did you come to be? I've never heard of your series before."
"Very keen, sir, I am originally a repair unit that one of the mechanics on board was trying to load astromech and protocol droid programming, very enterprising, a little bored, I have to admit, and he got quite far, I must say, before we had an accident, that resulted in a number of problems having to—"
Through this, Gram was trying to wave him to stop.
"Please stop, please stop," Gram urged him. The others glanced at him, but at least R1-D6 did stop. "They're coming."
They heard the footsteps from far off now, but they were getting louder. Within moments, the two stormtroopers from before came back.
"We just left, I'm sure it's nothing," the younger one insisted.
"Run the drill, kid," the gruff one could be heard responding to him loudly and angrily. They now appeared in front of the shield, visible and audible through its translucent frame.
"What the hell was that? You've been in here one minute and you're causing trouble," the gruff one addressed, slightly facing Sadissk. Soga and Gram retreated to the back wall, but Sadissk stood his ground in the center of the cell, more towards the shield, with R1-D6 next to him.
"I told you it was nothing," the younger one complained. "Read-the-manual! Shields don't—"
"'Shields don't', 'shields don't'," the gruff one stammered mockingly, "how about don't say anything? It's all about control with these things," he continued.
Sadissk continued holding his ground, silently. He felt the sensation of something.
Something coming.
His hunter senses, honed for millions of years of evolution, a thousand generations of T'doshok standing on the shoulders of one another, upon which Sadissk stood—his sensed a tingle of something.
He turned around.
"Something's…coming," Sadissk hissed to Soga and Gram. "Brace…"
In that moment, it felt like someone lifted the whole ship up, like it had been a toy in bathwater, and now picked up by a child. The bulkheads buckled and bent down the whole length of the ship as a wave, and the tremendous force threw everyone to one side of the cell wall in a crash of flesh and metal.
It was so forceful, it was the equivalent of near-terminal velocity, as when one might fall from a high building.
The sound of a massive gong, perpetual ringing, and blackness. They were all knocked unconscious.