Summary: 25 years after that fateful day in orbit over the second moon of Endor, Mara Jade and H'sishi make a clandestine trip to Niima Outpost on Jakku to scavenge something long buried. Their destination: the old weapons outpost beyond the Ship Graveyard. But a trip through the Graveyard requires a guide - and the only scavenger willing to work with them is a young woman called Rey. With no other choices, Mara agrees to a deal, but she may end up regretting it...
Mara had never been to Jakku prior to now, but after six hours on the blasted planet, she finally understands why everyone had been so insistent that it was nothing but a miserable, dusty pest-hole of planet with absolutely no redeeming features. Everything she'd experienced had only re-affirmed that one fact: the obstreperous Unkar Plutt, who was as mean and petty as any mid-Rim petty bureaucrat, and twice as spiteful; the geography, which was impossible for a stranger to navigate without a great deal of time and caution; and the local scavengers, who were so apathetic and fearful that no reward could tempt them to act as her guide through the Graveyard. And that just lead her back to her first obstacle, Unkar Plutt. If a fish rotted from the head, Mara was sure that Jakku had gone bad long ago.
"As I informed you when I arrived, I'm only interested in surveying the Inflictor; that menace Booster Terrik wants a third-party opinion before he goes to the trouble of coming here and paying you for salvage rights," Mara finally said, only letting the barest edge of her irritation shade the tone of her voice. He'd collared her outside her ship, and she didn't trust the little sneak further than she could throw him; she'd be damned before she let him have the least idea of how her security systems worked.
The Crolute sputtered at her, still disbelieving, and Mara just rolled her eyes. "You and I both know that after 25 years, this place is tapped out. The only thing you can do is start selling the capital ship components, like the superstructures and the hyperdrives. Even if Booster doesn't want it, I guarantee you that someone in the next two quarters is going to ask Karrde where an available Imperial-class Star Destroyer is lying around, and unless you want to lose control of your little fiefdom here, it would be better for you to set a price up with us so we can settle the negotiation ahead of time."
That stopped Plutt right in his tracks. "Are they really getting that difficult to find?" he asked, avarice gleaming in his moist eyes, and Mara was confirmed in her opinion that Plutt was a damn fool. She carefully kept her face neutral as she nodded, and Plutt suddenly smiled at her, his sagging jowls wobbling gently.
"But of course! I would never stand in the way of a mutually beneficial agreement between Niima Station and the great Talon Karrde! If you need a guide from among the scavengers, you need only ask."
"Thanks," Mara said, "But I think we're good. My colleague and I will set out today. I don't expect the initial survey to last more more than a standard week at most, so I'll see you before I take my leave of the Outpost."
Finally, the horrible man lumbered away, probably to fantasize about the untold riches he thought were coming his way. Totally fabricated, of course, but if Unkarr Plutt was stupid enough to believe a transparent lie, Mara certainly wasn't going to stand in his way.
Now...where was H'sishi?
H'sishi had spent the afternoon prowling around the Station, observing the scavengers and watching them polish their haul for the execrable Stationmaster. Standard issue wiring and servos, for the most part, with a few particularly well-armed crews working steadfastly on the components to cruiser comm systems - thin pickings. In her personal judgment, the Graveyard was done. All the personal arms and valuables would have been picked over in the first few years, as the bodies decomposed, and the following decades would have seen the slow-but-steady dismantling of almost every ship to the bare bones: the superstructure, the hull, and in the case of the largest capital ships, the hyperdrive. And salvaging those required shipyard tools, which Jakku lacked.
There was a certain niche market for repurposed first- and second-generation Star Destroyers, but none of the ships here would ever fly again, unless it was in pieces. Another five years and the scavengers would have to find their way off the planet - unless another battle were to fortuitously take place in the skies of Jakku once again. Even then, it might not help the scavengers of this world; the First Order was full of fanatics and terrorists, but they had proven shockingly capable over the past decade of shadow campaigns. H'sishi shook her head over the foolishness of taking capital ships into an atmo-fight; the post-Endor crop of Imperial captains and admirals had been painfully young and unseasoned, and the Graveyard showed it.
H'sishi surveyed the Station one last time before turning towards the Jade Fire to wait for Mara - but first, she saw a lithe darting figure walk towards the office, carefully carrying something bundled in her arms. By itself, that wasn't enough to draw H'sishi's attention, but the way the all the other scavengers affixed their gaze on the girl (for yes, now that H'sishi was focusing, she could see the figure was a humanoid girl of some type, hidden beneath the robes all desert dwellers the galaxy over seemed to prefer) piqued her curiosity. There was something hungry in their gaze... something H'sishi was intimately familiar with.
H'sishi altered her path to take her closer to the Stationmaster's office, and kept one half-lidded eye on the girl as she walked up the desk. The girl had a quarterstaff on her back, and she gripped it with her right hand as she waited for the horrible-smelling fish to come back. The girl's salvage was still securely wrapped up, but some of the braver or more opportunistic scavengers were beginning to shuffle closer. One of them, a shifty-looking Weequay, made a brazen grab for it - or at least he tried. Quick as a snake, the little girl unhooked her quarterstaff and smacked his knuckles hard before putting herself squarely between her treasure and the thief.
H'sishi didn't bother to pretend to not being interested anymore, her prowl increasing to a rangy lope as she ran towards the office. There was a part of her who well-remembered the pain of scavenging a particularly good or valuable piece, only for a gang of scrabbling, grasping fellow scavengers to steal it from her, traitors and cowards to the end. It had been many, many years, but H'sishi could still never abide a poacher.
But before she could intervene on the girl's side, one of Plo's little minions (and he was little; a weedy Rodian who kept brushing at his antenna irritably) came out of the office and shot the Weequay in the chest twice. By the time H'sishi made it to the office, the Weequay was breathing his last, his death rattle sounding particularly gruesome in the dry air. The girl took a step towards him, hand outstretched, until the guard pointed the blaster at her instead.
"You know the rules, Rey," he jibbered at her in Bocce. "Poaching is not allowed in Niima Station anyway."
Instead of stepping back, the girl fiercely cried, "But he's going to die! Let me help him!"
H'sishi blinked, surprised as hell. Never in her life had she ever heard such a ridiculous request. The Rodian was obviously more used to it, since he didn't even blink.
"He was going to steal your stuff if I hadn't shot him," he replied, already bored of the conversation.
"I could have taken him myself," Rey said hoarsely. "You didn't need to shoot him!"
"I didn't do it for you. I did it for the boss, because everyone's got to remember the rules: no stealing, no poaching, no lying in Niima Station! You know the consequences if you do, right? Right!" he screamed in the general direction of the other scavengers, brandishing his weapon at them. Truly, he was a great fool: H'shishi had once seen a man try the same thing on a mass of beggars asking for food, only be be torn apart by the enraged crowd. A great and terrible moan arose from the crowd, and H'sishi tensed, ready for anything if the crowd turned on them. But after a tense second, the scavengers turned and sullenly walked back to their cleaning stations, bitterness in every line of their bodies.
H'sishi felt sorry for them...but only a little. She settle back against the wall of the office, the girl Rey in her peripheral vision, still clutching her staff and fiercely watching her prize. Behind her, the Weequay finally breathed his last, and the Rodian grunted and groaned as he tried to pull the dead weight of the Weequay body, until he finally yelled for his Gamorrean partner to get the sled and carry the stinking body away. In the distance, Unkarr Plutt, he of the rotting-fish-smell, entered the borders of the camp from the direction of the makeshift port.
H'shishi did not sheathe her blades.
Rey had seen the Togorian woman a long time before the Togorian woman had seen her. But that was the way of it, usually. No one really seemed to see Rey unless she wanted to be found, which was just the way she liked it. The Togorian had been pacing through the station all afternoon, observing some of the tougher crews - Jana and her boys, fresh from picking the Allegiance clean of every meter of durasteel wiring, or the Vtirn brothers, who specialized in heavy lifting - but for whatever reason, none of them passed muster with the woman. Smart of her: most of the crews would as soon turn on a person as smile at them, especially now that pickings had gotten so slim.
In truth, pickings had always been slim, as long as Rey could remember. Some of the older scavengers, who'd come here when the Graveyard was freshly buried, would wax rhapsodic about the loot they'd found in those far-off days: thousands of blaster rifles, armour just ready to be plucked off dead bodies, and more compnavs and medical instruments than you could shake a stick at. But those days were long gone. Rey thought she might have finished them up herself, today, with her current prize.
It seemed to take forever for Xar to haul away Jorah's body. Kota was still on guard behind the door with his blaster, and Xar rejoined him almost immediately, his own rifle at the ready. If that weren't enough, the Togorian was leaning against the wall next to the window, casually inspecting her vibroblades. Rey wished she wouldn't do that; bad enough Plutt's guards had intervened and killed Jorah, but having an outsider involve herself would make Rey very hard to forget over the next few weeks. If her find panned out, she wouldn't have to worry about it - she'd have enough to hole up at her place and not come out until everyone's temper simmered down - but if it didn't, she'd probably have to do her scavenging in the Toxic Triangle, and let the hawkbats protect her.
Not for the first time, Rey thought about how much she hated Jakku.
It seemed to take forever for Plutt to finally make it through the stalls to his office, and Rey could feel the eyes of the other scavengers finally slide off her and move onto him. Good. He had details of armed guards around him all the time; Rey just had herself and her hidey-hole, and couldn't afford to have everyone in Niima Station angry with her because it was easier than being angrier with him and his guards when they killed someone. By the time he got to his desk behind the counter, Rey was feeling both impatient and nauseated - impatient because he was taking so long, and nauseated because his horrible stink was wafting around her. She started breathing shallowly through her mouth, thankful her hood was still covering her face.
Finally - finally! - he settled into what everyone called his "judging stance": shoulders cocked, hands loose and ready, and his keen eyes sharper still, ready to look at any imperfection. He nodded to her once, and that was Rey's cue to delicately unwrap her find and present it to him. At first, she was confident he would confirm her find's status right away, given the good condition and the parts, but as long moments passed, she was worried her find was no good - his face was utterly unchanged, eyes still curiously looking the small piece of equipment over, fingers delicately turning it to and fro - but the Togorian woman, of all people, bolstered her confidence.
[A miniaturized hypercomm unit?] she murmured throatily, the strange harmonics in her voice making the hair on the back of Rey's neck stand upright. [I'm surprised it could be salvaged intact after so many years. Wherever did you find it?]
Rey hadn't dared to look away from Plutt's face, and a good thing, too - right after the Togorian had said that, a flash of deep-set irritation passed across his face, quick as a blink. In an instant, Rey knew he'd planned to fake her out and pretend it was nearly worthless, cheat her out of the hard work that had gone into finding the hidden unit and the days spent carefully dissembling the bulkhead around it, piece by painstaking piece, all to pull the unit out in one piece and undisturbed. For just an instant, Rey was so angry...
...and then she counted to ten in her head, released her anger, and casually looked at the Togorian. "I found it in the stateroom of the Intrepid. It'd been cleaned out pretty well years ago, but the bulkheads had buckled in the fall so much nobody bothered to check the clearances; I did."
The Togorian woman nodded regally, her slit-pupiled yellow eyes assessing Rey from head to toe. [Very clever. Sometimes one can find the best things in places others think are empty, no?]
"Yes, very well done Rey," Plutt interrupted. "A rare and valuable find, good work."
He considered the hypercomm unit once again, still turning it this way and that in his hands, before solemnly pronouncing his judgment, and Rey held her breath in anticipation. "430 units."
Rey felt a smile tugging at her lips - she hadn't had so much food in a very long time! That would see her through the storm season safely, when the winds were so strong none dared go out to the graveyard lest they lose themselves in the Wastes or the Canyons instead. Plutt tossed her the pack of food tokens over the counter, and she quickly counted them all before stringing 42 of them along her waist, underneath her robes. The 43rd she pushed back toward the stationmaster, careful to not let her hand cross the invisible barrier between "inside" and "outside"; Plutt was always very finicky about that.
He huffed at her in irritation, but turned towards the food locker, grumbling all the way before tossing her a 10-pack of rations. Rey put it in her knapsack before turning back towards her re-purposed speeder - but she had only taken a step before the Togorian woman smoothly pushed herself off the wall, and began walking next to her, stride for stride. Rey looks at her suspiciously, automatically taking the scenic route towards her speeder, but the Togorian showed no signs of even paying attention.
[You said you found that on the Intrepid] she rumbled, mouth carefully shaping the vowels of the Antarian trade language. [Do you do a lot of scavenging there?]
Rey hesitated another second, but the woman had not done her any ill - had actually assisted her, even if unknowingly. There could be no harm in telling her, especially since Rey was virtually certain the Intrepid was actually tapped out. "Yes," she said quietly. "I've done most of my salvaging in that area in the past year."
[Excellent!] the woman's ears flicked up, and Rey wondered what that meant among her species. [My partner and I are here on Jakku to survey the superstructures of the SD IIs for offworld salvage - with the permission of your stationmaster, of course. We are in need of a guide - would you be willing to serve?]
Rey stopped walking immediately, and looked at the Togorian with suspicious eyes. It didn't seem like a con, but the best ones never did. Rey just took a moment to look at the Togorian, really look at her: dark fur going grey with age, leather harness holding her dual vibroblades, and yellow eyes, calming surveying her back. She didn't seem like a bad person...
...but appearances could be deceiving.
"Why me?" Rey asked suspiciously. "I'm a good scavenger, but there are others, more experienced, better armed. I'm just one person."
The Togorian woman just chuckled. [Yes, that is true...but none of them have your spirit, do they?] she replied lightly, the harmonics slightly higher-toned than before. [Also, my friend and I can defend ourselves, but we would prefer not to have to sleep with one eye on our guide while traveling the wastes.]
Rey nodded slowly. "You'll have to do that anyway to keep an eye on the wildlife."
She observed the Togorian one instant more, but in truth she's already made up her mind: she will help this woman and her partner. But just because she's going to help them doesn't mean she's going to do it for free.
"So if I do this, what will I get out of it?" She questioned aggressively. "Every moment I'm guiding you, I'm not salvaging, and that doesn't earn me food. What will you give me in return for my assistance?"
The Togorian woman smiled, her teeth gleaming brightly in the sun. [Tell me] she says, and Rey would almost call it a purr. [Have you ever heard of Talon Karrde?]