Hello! This is an upload for a story I've been writing on and off for a few months. I wasn't really satisfied with chapters 1 and 2 yet, but I liked 3 and 4 enough to give it a test shot and see if I could get some feed back, even if they arn't particularly long chapters. Please feel free to leave any comments! Motivation is always appreciated. Honest thoughts please.

Chapter 3 'Selling Souls'

"Fourteen thousand credits." A Mandalorian voxbox spoke through a green tinted visor and gun-metal gray mask.

"Fourteen? For his skill sets? Surely you can do better, yes? The boy's more a utility than a slave." Thago Vhelm declared, Captain of the Scorched Kryat, the floating hunk of scrap on which the two negotiating parties spoke.

Thago Vhelm believed himself a boisterous, and illustrious man. If illustrious meant what he thought it did. The pirate wore patchwork trench cloak of off shade navy blues and greens. His short black hair was slicked with grease towards the back of his neck. Thago was born to a weequay pirate life, raised out of the grime and grift into a life of slave trade and smuggling. He was a man of a certain talent for trouble, and an ability to anger with such precision that'd give most surgeons chills. It didn't help the man spoke with the slime of a weequay accent, and the attitude of cock-sure salesman.

"Thirteen-fifty." The Mandalorian spokesman shot back. The script on his black and gray pauldrons read 'Tremor', not that it was of any consequence to to Thago. Captain Vhelm had taken to calling them by their what they were, customers.

"Now listen to me, you step onto my beautiful ship, my home, to look at my parcels under my hospitality, and you attempt to undersell me?"

"Twelve".

"Okay! Okay! Fine. You want to be brigands about it. Sit. Drink and discuss with me, yes? Surely you know a pirate doesn't not deal without the drink." The Pirate was met with a chorus of stoic visor glares. A few moments of indeterminable silence passed, Thago's eyes passing between their triggers and their helmets. Finally, the tension was cut with the sound of a purple marked Mandoan in the back cracking the locks on his helmet's pressure-release into the cabin. The air traveled up in a steam, towards the glowing sign above the door that read 'AFT B, DEALINGS' in galactic basic. A warning for the other crew to keep their paws off the drink reserves within.

"Stand down, T. We'll drink on his dime." The party seemed to visibly accept this order without hesitation, dispersing across the room to the various chairs about. Thago found this pleasing, giving a cheshire grin to the party, a golden tooth glimmering against the room's synthetic lighting. Thago stepped across the metal grated flooring, kicking up flecks of rust and dirt from his shoes, falling into the ship's guts below, and onto the face of a tireless boy mechanic, hanging sideways from a coolant shaft, elbow deep in a power box, and now temporarily blinded by the bits of rusted flecks falling from above. The small shaft hummed with the sound of the throbbing veins of his ship. Thago owned it, but no one knew the Scorched Kryat like Gerrek.

The boy cursed quietly, his eyes now shut and the synth light on his headset being of no use. He touched about in the forced blindness. 'One….two….three…..sixteen….There.' A pang of instinct, and a tug, and the wire was snapped out of the circuit it had melted into. A rattling sound was heard as a distant coolant turbine slowed to a halt. Leaving him in the perpetual silence of a coolant shaft, just below the dealings room. He sat for a moment, considering going back to work, when a few words caught his attention above.

"The boy's worth at least seventeen. He has the gift. He speaks with machines. You must understand, by giving him up, he is worth at least four, maybe five other slaves. Not to mention my sentimentality for his...fight."

"We don't need a fighter. We need a mechanic. Your sentiment means nothing to business-"

The Pirate cut in on the Mandalorians words, grating the Mandoan's patience like sandpaper.

"Ah, but that is the key word is it not? Need. Your ship won't make it to a shop without repairs to get there. And we do not sell supplies. I only sell souls. And fixes, but you don't seem the type." A grin like a crescent moon followed his statements.

There was a moment of tense silence in the group, each Mandoan tapping a finger over their trigger guards.

"Sixteen. And we'll give him a test first."

"Deal! Now drink!"

The coolant shaft below was already empty, the project abandoned, and a wire hanging loosely out of the circuit box.

Chapter 4

The Scorched Kryat was a small Lancer-class Frigate, a civilian model repurposed and pervasively modified for its new purposes. Manned by a crew of three hundred strong, with enough room for another hundred slaves in its massive atrium cargo holds. The inside of the holding bays kept communal cells, with individual bolt locks holding upwards of ten to twenty slaves within tight quarters. They were fed irregularly, and often entertainment for the drunk slavers who ran the boat. A four legged security drone meandered about the bay, watching the environment for irregularities.

It was within those conditions that Gerrek was first pulled from his group. Officially, his records show his birth at Polis Massa, but somewhere in his first year, his parents were met by the Thalassian Slavers guild. Before he could stand, Gerrek was branded by the Thalassian Empire. Slave tattoo's, Thalassian script and symbology written over his arms and chest, and down his back. Intended to mark the boy within their caste.

It's an odd sight, a boy barely fifteen, covered in tattoo's that his loose fitting clothing never truly hid. It was in that year, that a Thalassian Slave Trade group met with a freshly modified ship with a flamed Kryat skeleton upon its side. It's Captain bought the slaves in bulk, intending to upsell them to nearby colonies with dwindling populations.

The original cells of the slave bunkers, had kept the slaves with a barred hold, a keypad lock within reach of its users. The crew of the Scorched Kryat hadn't considered what a bullheaded child with an aggressive disposition, little self preservation, and a fork could be capable of. That was the first uprising attempt of Gerrek's term as prisoner. They separated him from the group, and fed him in even less consistent rotations. Then he escaped through a ventilation shaft. Then through the hollowed out shell of an astromech. So on, and so forth.

At a certain point, Thago came to a decision. End the games, he could eject the boy out of an airlock or resell him at a discounted price for Rancor food, but for some reason, Thago Vhelm has always found tenacity endearing. After the number of beatings Gerrek received there was one thing certain about the boy, he was tenacious, and didn't take a beating sitting down.

Thago, for what credit he deserves, made the more intelligent decision. Instead adopting the boy as a cabin boy, refitting him with a closet room in the engine bay, and putting him to work. At seventeen, Gerrek had stiff-armed his way from a cargo slave, to a working slave. Using his eye for mechanics, and small size, to cram into the guts of the beast they traveled in, the smuggling shafts and ports where only a boy of his size and skill could fit. He quickly became a favorite among the crew, both to abuse and to command.

In those years, leading to where he was in his current life, the only time of solace and break he found were in his small maintenance closet that had been refitted with a hammock, a small lamp, and a desk where he could work on projects. Redrawn star charts and memorabilia decked the walls. Schematics to projects of his own design, heads of droids that were well beyond repair, Rebel Alliance gear and kit's were all aligned perfectly on the makeshift shelves built from the preexisting furniture of his hideaway.

It was here that he built his greatest project, a friend.

Gerrek tapped the top of a small black box, lit under a synthtorch tucked over his ear.

"C'mon….You're on, why won't you talk?"

The little black box sat in dormancy for a few moments, before its single speaker made a quiet 'BZRK' sound.

Gerrek was breathless, not realizing he had been holding it in anticipation. A grin spread across the young boys face. The droid another toned 'BZRK' at it's creator.

"I'm Gerrek. I just made you."

The droid offered a lower toned noise in response now.

"What? Hold on."

Gerrek rummaged through his tool kit, a box with the lock snapped off. Wherever it came from, it apparently had not been his own. Gerrek cracked open the small box droids shell and tweaked a circuit. He nabbed the head of a protocol droid from his shelf, a blackened shell with a few broken pieces inside. Gerrek dug about within its skull for a few moments, and found what he needed. He plugged a small black chip into the box.

"There. I'm Gerrek. You can be...Nomad."

The box flitted through a series of high and low tones of motherboard noises. Testing its new inflective capabilities, then giving another loud, BZRK.

"Oh come on. At least hear me out."

BZRK.

"Guh. Fine. Let's run some tests then. Nomad, are your memory banks working?"

BZRK.

"...Okay. What about Astrogate adapter?"

BZRK.

Gerrek let out a huff and set the box down away from him. The defeated boy crawled into his hammock bed for some much needed rest. His jade eyes watched the little black box, his only real plan.

"We'll try again tomorrow then."

BZRK.