Chapter 1: Upon the Ashes
Ash Badlands, Lavestral
Laclim Sector
Wild Space
1 BBY
Kamick shook a bit of pumice out of his boot, idly scanning the horizon as he did so. The gray sky stretched on into barren nothingness forever, or so it seemed. Ash and volcanic rock and nothing else unto the end of the world. It was a miserable vista, and he'd never loved it. Only outsiders found anything beautiful in the stark dark basalt-covered wastelands of the planet. He simply lived here.
The young man slipped his boot back on and slid into the seat of his landspeeder. Two hundred klicks to Havestram, the next settlement larger than a homestead. He figured he could make it with an hour or so before nightfall. It would be a decent place to stop on this segment of his outback patrol. He pulled back on the accelerator and kicked the vehicle into motion.
Accelerating around an ash flow Kamick caught a glimpse of something in the sky, a streak in the haze. He braked immediately, pulling about and up to the highest nearby point for a better vantage. Popping the landspeeder's canopy he grabbed the macrobinoculars from their resting place in the empty passenger seat and pulled them to his face.
There's a streak alright, he confirmed quickly. And fresh too, east-west pathway, maybe forty degrees declination. He tried to judge altitude, to guess the probable termination point of the trail cutting through the haze-coated sky. It wasn't easy, he didn't think it would pin down well. "North," he muttered, sloshing saliva around against the gritty atmosphere. "What's north?" His patrol region was massive by almost any standard, tens of thousands of square kilometers. The only saving grace was that it was mostly ash-coated wasteland, he was well beyond the radius of heavy land adaptation efforts. Kamick tried to plot matters against a mental map, but quickly gave up and grabbed a datapad off the dash.
"Oprail's Dojo's north," he pulled off the map. "Well damn." He looked at the trail again. Who or whatever it was, they were either already there or soon would be. He jumped backed into the landspeeder in a smooth motion born of endless repetition. It was the act of a second to plug the datapad into the center console and bring up Lavestral's limited central data net. He scowled as his suspicions were confirmed. There were no landings scheduled for Oprail's Dojo today or anytime this week. Nothing for the whole 48/60 sector in fact.
Kamick checked the emergency band next. Nothing. If is was an accident no one had called in or screamed in distress yet. He doubted it was anyway. He grabbed the landspeeder's embedded comlink. "This is Kilo-Tango," he grimaced. He wanted to kill the moron who'd simply used each officer's initials for cal-signs. "Calling Delta-Hotel," Even the dispatch headquarters had a lame identifier. "Possible unregistered landing in 48/60. Moving to investigate."
"Copy that Kilo-Tango," Kamick thought the voice belonged to Farns, a semi-retired officer without anything remotely resembling drive left in him. "Start time?"
Kamick glanced at his wrist chrono. "1636," he answered. "Estimate distance to contact at..." he looked at the map again and did a quick mental calculation. "One hundred and eighty klicks. Moving out." He didn't wait for Farns to respond with approval. He slammed the accelerator down and pushed the landspeeder to full.
Regrettably, maximum thrust wasn't what Kamick would have wished, the speeders they had to work with were old and always put through about ten too many repair jobs, but it would have to do. Besides, there was something to be said for screaming across a bleak ash-scape dodging outcroppings, dips, and outflows at close to three hundred klicks an hour. He rarely got the chance to push things.
As his eyes narrowed to laser focus on the terrain, the rest of the officer's mind moved on a secondary track of equal importance. Why would anyone bust in on Oprail's Dojo? There was nothing there except a bunch of martial artists and students playing at achieving enlightenment by learning to break rocks with their foreheads. It wasn't even a special dojo, there were dozens of the facilities scattered across Lavestral. Thanks Master Taishi, Kamick laughed bitterly. One famous nujit proclaims us the perfect training ground and within a decade we're positively infested with little camps. In fairness, the officer had to admit, the martial artists really weren't much trouble. They were secluded, didn't bother any neighbors they might have, and usually did a decent job of maintaining control of their own.
They also kept in touch with the rest of the galaxy pretty much exclusively through cargo airspeeder runs. Why in the galaxy would a ship burn hard on a direct course to such a place? He didn't like it at all. Unregistered landings were common enough, Kamick had seen a few even in his short tenure as an outback deputy, but they were usually more subtle than this.
Maybe it is some kind of nasty accident, he worried.
The landspeeder blasted across the landscape of volcanic leftovers at a steady clip, and there was nothing for the deputy to do but radio in to Farns at a thirty minute check point. He kept up the occasional glance at the sky. They were definitely down on the surface now, he was sure of it. And the trail didn't have the erratic look of an out of control vessel. Someone had landed at the dojo deliberately. Some big wig Core Worlder fan show up and think the rules don't matter? It had been known to happen, but Kamick's gut said it was nothing so benign. He was worried, and his grip tightened on the wheel.
Oprail's Dojo was settled into a small sheltered gorge, surrounded on three sides by the haunting hillsides formed when the lava had ceased to flow only a few millenniums in the past. It had a section of thick ash deposits used for agriculture, they all did. The volcanic soil was rich and fertile if you had the right plants and a few genetic tweaks. The little scattered enclaves were supposedly harbingers of a great greening to come, a bounty of foodstuffs growing everywhere in just a few centuries. Kamick didn't believe the hype, not really, though he kind of hoped his homeworld could bloom someday. I'll never see it anyway, he knew.
The gorge was extremely steep. Perfect for training intrepid martial artists, but bad on old-model landspeeders well past their prime. He had no real choice but to approach from the front. Kamick did so slowly, hugging the curves. He'd been to the dojo many times, as he had every place in his sector, and was hopeful he could creep in without being noticed.
The dojo complex was not large, and the majority of the buildings were sunk into the hillsides, to take advantage of the temperature moderation against the chill nights on the open ground of ashy desert. Most of the area in the gorge was either in crops or preserved as training grounds. There were no tall structures in the open. So it was that anything occupying such a space stood out clearly.
Kamick halted the landspeeder before the last bend and crept forward at a crawl, one hand on the controls and the other on his macrobinoculars. He craned forward and tried to glimpse around corners.
There is a ship! The deputy's face broke into a grin at this confirmation of his suspicions. He'd been right! An older, but still very functional Doomtreader was sitting parked in the middle of the dojo's practice field.
A moment later he fervently wished he'd been wrong.
There were figures in motion on the field, standing around the open boarding ramp of the freighter, apparently waiting for other to emerge from within the buildings.
Kamick zoomed in to max on one of these.
Seems human, he thought initially, though they wore heavy green outfits rather like soldiers might. Then he focused on the face.
His knuckles went white around the macrobinoculars.
Red hair, pointed ears, chin and brow with horned spurs. Zygerrians!
His heart pounding in his chest Kamick's next glimpse confirmed his worst fear. Two of the Zygerrians emerged from one of the buildings hauling a prone figure between them.
This was a slave raid.
Kamick took a deep breath, ordering his hands to stop shaking. He put the eyepiece down in the passenger seat and carefully pressed the lever for reverse. Using as little power as he could he pulled the landspeeder backwards, just a few meters, putting a massive mound of black basalt between him and everything he had just seen.
I am so dead, he thought in all seriousness.
There was a brief, utterly dysfunctional pause, and then the deputy's training, slipshod though it had been, slammed into place.
He grabbed the comlink. "This is Kilo-Tango to Delta-Hotel, I have a situation here."
"Copy that Kilo-Tango," Farns disinterested voice was terrifying to Kamick. "What is your situation?"
"I have a slave raid in progress at Oprail's Dojo, coordinates 48.56/60.12," he breathed into the comlink, hardly daring to make any noise. "Repeat, I have an active slave raid in progress. Raiders are based out of a Doomtreader freighter and are Zygerrians, repeat Zygerrians. Requesting immediate backup with all available units."
"Zygerrians?" There was a clatter from the other end. Kamick winched in the recognition that Farns had just overturned his chair, but at least the old man was engaged. "Are you under fire?"
"Negative, Delta-Hotel," Kamick prayed it stayed that way. "I appear to be undetected for the moment, but they're sure to notice me if they send someone this way or if the freighter takes off. I need backup!"
"Copy that," Farns replied. "We'll get you everything we've got, sit tight Kilo-Tango, and do not engage, I repeat, do not engage!"
I know that you nujit, Kamick barely refrained from screaming back into the comlink. I'm not going to take on who knows how many Zygerrians and a whole freighter by myself!
"Standing by," he managed. "Hurry up over there."
The comlink lapsed into silence, and with it went the meager distraction it had provided from a nigh overwhelming sense of impending doom. Kamick could do sums in his head well enough to know what he was up against. Lavestral was a minor colony, with few inhabitants and weak government. There wasn't another officer within five hundred kilometers. We could stack up every sheriff and deputy on the continent against these slavers and I'd call it maybe even odds. What can I do myself? He could only hope to go unnoticed and find some way to survive.
There was no point in making a break for it, the repulsors would surely be detected if he brought the engines to full. He had to hope to remain unnoticed and pray that when the Zygerrians launched they chose to ignore a single landspeeder as not worth blasting to bits. Given the general reputation of Zygerrian slavers, Kamick didn't like those odds.
He reached back to the back seat and wrenched free his riot shield. The meter-long plastoid rectangle wasn't precisely standard issue, but he'd kept his after tactics training. It was comforting, and lent weight to certain arguments. Drunken farmers didn't swing at you when you carried a shield. Wrapping the defensive device around his left arm he felt a little bit better. His blaster pistol rested in his hand on his lap, he was as ready as he could be.
A small clattering noise pulled the deputy's head left. Little bits of scree had rolled down the embankment sheltering him from the dojo.
They're here, Kamick somehow knew instantly.
He slapped open the door and rolled free of the landspeeder, coming up with blaster pistol at eye level, shield covering his body.
A tall Zygerrian, armed and armored for oppression, looked down from the ridge in surprise.
Kamick breathed in, feeling as if time had slowed down. His pistol came up, he took aim, and pulled the trigger all the way down.
A ruby red bolt slammed the alien dead in the chest.
The older DC blaster pistols issued to the officers of Lavestral were weaker than many models, but their tibana gas was good quality and the Zygerrian's armor a half-baked design more for style and intimidation than function. The slaver was dead instantly.
His body thudded down onto the iron hard volcanic earth.
There were shouts and many booted feet could suddenly be heard running in Kamick's direction. The officer turned, pulling back behind his speeder, even as a poorly aimed stun blast slammed the vehicle's front end. Come on then! His mind raged. At least I'll take a few with me!
Another Zygerrian appeared, crouching atop the ridge, firing as he crab-walked forward.
Kamick's shield deflected the first stun blast and he fired back repeatedly. The officer's ruby bolts were a deep contrast to the blue energy fields being used against him, but he knew the only impact he could make was to shoot to kill. Stunned Zygerrians would be fine in minutes. If he went down it was all over.
Dodging left Kamick fired not at the Zygerrian's silhouette, but at the ground before the alien, sending nasty shards of pumice into the air. Come on, up, up...he needed the reaction.
The slaver did not disappoint. Crying in pain the red haired alien bent upwards, putting a hand to his bleeding face.
Kamick shot him in the head, pulling the trigger again and again to make sure.
Then the stun blasts came from his right.
Rut! Kamick knew he was doomed even as he strove to turn. His body was out of position, shield on the wrong side, no cover from his speeder. He let his feet go, sliding downward to the ground to buy a moment, a stun blast barreling over his head. He got off a few wild shots in the direction of the red-haired foes, maybe he hit, maybe not, but then it was too late.
A stun blast struck him inside the shield on the left shoulder, and he collapsed to the volcanic earth and the blackness.
"I say we feed him to the scavengers and have done with it," Kamick's awareness returned to hear a harsh voice speaking guttural Basic in close proximity to his head.
"And I say he's a valuable piece of property," A deeper, firmer, but still crude voice answered the first.
Kamick blinked repeatedly, trying to grasp what was going on. Where am I? He wondered for a moment, as memory slowly returned. Oh, rut me...he recognized a moment later. Dimness was the rule of this place, he guessed some kind of cargo hold. He felt the cold touch of metal around his neck, and at both wrists, only belatedly realizing his hands were above his head. As vision cleared he looked up to see a pair of stun cuffs binding his hands. These were bound by a foot long chain to a durasteel bar sticking down from the ceiling. He was not hanging, but was shackled standing, hands extended, unable to sit or even properly bend over to relax. What are they doing to me? He wondered, and then, also, how long have I been like this?
It was a terrifying thought. Stun blasts only lasted for a few minutes, more than that and permanent neural damage would likely result. Am I going to be a cripple? These and other irrational thoughts surged through the deputy's brain for long moments until the voices bought him back to a focus on the present again.
It was two Zygerrians speaking, one, a head taller than the other, seemed to possess signs of authority.
It was the smaller one who objected. "He's a cop, and cops should all die!" He stressed. "He'll never serve."
"Oh I think he will, they all do, eventually," the tall Zygerrian smirked.
"But he's a cop!" the smaller one wasn't the brightest Zygerrian in the galaxy, Kamick thought, but he was obstinate. "His genetic code is in databases, what if he finds another cop and has it read?"
He's right, Kamick thought. I could do that. If his biometrics were run by any law enforcement database his identity would pop up immediately. It had been a program the Empire demanded of even Levestral's outback deputies. He'd always hated it, but now it seemed a sort of blessing. There's no way they can keep me as a slave, he thought it gleeful surprise.
This brightening emptied away into a dark abyss almost immediately. That means they'll just kill me then. Why haven't they done it yet?
"Where he's going that won't matter," the tall Zygerrian scoffed, and this seemed to shut the other one up while his dim mind searched for a proper response.
"He's still a risk," the other Zygerrian groused at length. "And he's dangerous. We're down two because of that rutting cop."
Two confirmed Kamick's memory, but it made him happy for a moment. He'd taken two down, despite being ambushed. How many others of the laid-back, worthless excuse for a police force that was Lavestral's deputies could manage the same? Even if you kill me, I've made my mark you bastards.
"And because we're down that means we must get more value from every body you fool," the tall one stopped short of slapping the smaller one, but he had clearly considered it. "I'm not wasting this one just because he happens to have had a badge slapped on him by some backwater colony."
Feeling terrible anxious watching this bickering, and the awkward chained position beginning to pain him, the deputy let out an involuntary groan.
Red-haired horned heads snapped around.
"Awake it would seem," the tall one noted. "Good, I was wondering if you were going to join us. Any longer and I might have given you to my man here to play with. You did kill his uncle after all."
Kamick found the remark stirred his anger and courage. "Like I care nujit," he spat as far as he could at the Zygerrians, and though it fell well short he was glad it made them step back. "I wish I'd taken more of you down. I suppose it'll be someone else to see you executed for this."
"My good man, you are quite the fool," the Zygerrian smiled cruelly. "What have we done? I assure you, slavery is quite legal under the new and glorious Galactic Empire."
"Don't think I'm an idiot just cause I'm from an ashy little planet," Kamick ground his teeth. "Slavery might be legal, this rutting raiding isn't even close, and if you think the Empire won't string you up for taking me, you're crazier than I thought, even for a Zygerrian."
The other man scowled, and Kamick smiled at his annoyance. That trick might work on provincial bumpkins, but not on someone who'd read even the barest bit of legal news. Kamick hated the Empire, but whatever faults they had, many fleet captains were sticklers for the letter of the law. Most also hated Zygerrians. Then again, that was true of just about anyone.
"It seems you have a bit of a brain as well as brawn," the slaver's smirk returned. "You may actually be a competent officer of the law, how unusual for this sector. Well, well, I may have underestimated you a bit, but it makes no difference. Lavestral isn't coming after us, indeed, I bet we could buy their silence for a pittance if necessary," Kamick's heart sank into a perilous place, but he could not deny the slaver's words. The cash-strapped government of a tiny colony wasn't wasting resources trying to retrieve an overzealous deputy gone missing. There would be a bulletin about it, and maybe a few local news stories, and then it would be all over but for the mourning of his parents. He hoped the government would at least do them the favor of saying he'd died in action. It would be a kindness.
"But we shall not have to bother," the slaver went on. "You have not told anyone anything useful about us, and you won't be telling anyone else where you're going," Again the odd reference. The deputy's police mindset wondered how the man could be so confident. He'd seen videos of slave auction blocks, a prize could pass into any number of hands, how could he know what was to happen? "However," and now the Zygerrian smiled, pulling his chin horns wide and menacing. "There are things you could certainly tell us." Slowly the slaver paced around the small confined space. "Tell me," he demanded in a calm voice. "How did you find our ship? Who alerted you to our presence? Did someone from the dojo put out a distress signal perhaps?"
The answer wasn't important, the deputy knew that, but he refused to give in to this lowlife scum of a slaver with his pretensions of sophistication. "Choke on it nujit," he barked in reply.
"Obstinate, typical of a cop," The Zygerrian took a step back, and then pulled a small device from an alcove on the wall. "But you may find resistance to be very costly."
The Zygerrian shifted the device in his hand, revealing it to Kamick as nothing but a pad and a button. "Perhaps you expect me to let my comrade here have at you with fists and knives and so forth?" he raised an eyebrow, waiting for the deputy's reaction. "That won't happen. Such crude practices damage the goods, and are bad for crew discipline. Superior beings such as the Zygerrian race must avoid such things." He grinned, all teeth. "Despite this, the master's commands must be obeyed, and obedience must be enforced. Technology, thankfully, offers a simple and effective measure. You may be amazed to discover just what can be done by altering the settings on a normal pair of stun cuffs."
Kamick took a deep breath. He wasn't ready for this, could anyone be ready for this? What do I do? Would telling the man outright even work? Did the Zygerrian actually desire the truth, mundane though it was? Rut it, the deputy decided. He couldn't accept backing down now, he'd at least make the nujit slaver push the button.
"So I'll ask one more time, will you tell me how you discovered us? Or do I have to do this the difficult way. You should know, resistance is not something I desire, as it is a sign of foolishness and failure to properly comply with the needs of ones superiors, which of course reflects badly on me." He said that, but the grin of anticipation revealed the lie for what it was, pure pretentiousness. Maybe Darth Vader could give that little speech for real, Kamick thought bitterly. This bastard's just a crook with a serpent tongue.
"Stop blathering and get on with it," Kamick spat.
"As you wish."
With a savage exhalation of joy the Zygerrian pushed the button and the screaming began.
Kamick awoke in darkness, surrounded by strange scents and the press of nearby bodies. He could see nothing, but was wrapped in some kind of restraining mesh. Feeling to each side he caught reflexive reactions, other flesh shying away from contact with his own. They've got us packed in like droids! He realized in horror. His bowels were hooked up to some kind of filtration system to maintain cleanliness, and he would bet there was an IV somewhere for nutrition. The slavers probably hose and soap the whole place down periodically. It was terrifying, being trapped in this way, knowing others were on all sides.
It was not so horrifying as his memories. The pain, oh the pain, it still lingered in his mind, utterly intense. Worse than the pain was the failure. He'd tried to resist, tried with everything he had to avoid saying anything, but in the end he'd told the Zygerrian exactly what he'd wanted. He'd spotted the trail on patrol. That had been all. There had been more pain to follow as the slaver confirmed his answer, but nothing hurt so much as the failure. They'd beaten him, these disgusting slavers had beaten him.
What kind of cop am I? I can't face the criminals in the eye. The grief tormented him here in the dark, where the reality of doom was overwhelming. He was a slave now, and if the Zygerrians were to be believed, he had no chance of escape for the rest of his days. Is this it? Kamick wondered. My life come to an end at twenty-two, with three years in the service as my only legacy?
The darkness offered no answers.
For a time the torment of his grief and pity overwhelmed him, but with no stimuli the mind eventually lost focus on it and returned to other distractions.
Dark as empty space though the cargo hold was, there was sound. The slavers had rigged up some kind of white noise generator to obscure any possibly coherence, but there were bits and pieces there, and it dawned on the deputy that he was hearing a great many languages. Fragments of Basic floated about to be sure, but so did many other languages, and not all were common. A snippet of Bocce there, a phrase in what he thought was Huttese here, but the rest was improbably strange, odd sounds bearing no resemblance to anything he'd ever heard before.
Who are these beings? Why did the slavers go after them? In fact, he wondered in morbid curiosity. "Why did they hit the dojo at all?" As a cop he'd had some training in how to think like criminal, and the action made no sense. The dojo was a low-density site, unsuited for a mass raid. It had a mixed-species population, so there was no appeal to find some niche product. Moreover, as a dojo it was filled with martial arts students and teachers, practitioners of unarmed combat and mental discipline, people likely to make the very worst types of slaves. Why did they hit the place? Why does he think I'll never speak of this again?
Over a time, Kamick had no way to know how long it was in the darkness, the deputy developed a theory. The Zygerrians weren't acting on their own. Someone had paid them to hit the dojo, and wherever else they'd hit on this trip. This backer, whoever it was, had some agenda, and was going to buy all of the slaves up en masse. Why someone would do that he could not fathom, but he was sure in his gut it was the right theory. It offered a tiny bit of small solace as the freighter blasted out of hyperspace and hurtled its sentient cargo towards whatever terrible fate awaited them.
Chapter Notes
Slang – the term Nujit refers to a kind of disgusting vermin endemic to the region. Rut is a legitimate term of course, but it is used as a curse word by Epherments (who have actual mating ruts) and has been popularized across the Kalat Arm as a result.
Technical Banter – Kamick uses existing radio code, gives coordinates in lat/long terms and so forth. Creating a parallel system would be overly time consuming and probably confusing to boot.
KR-TB 'Doomtreader' freighters are canonical vessel class from before the Clone Wars.
Zygerrians are a canonical race. Slavery is kind of what they do.