To all readers of this work, I humbly beg patience. It is my goal with this to be a full scale novel, and one in which I want to examine in detail the characters herein. For those of you who don't know who I am, I enjoy writing fiction as a hobby, and would love to one day get my material added to the Star Wars canon. I've come up with what I think are some pretty good ideas that, if published would put a whole new spin on droids, which I introduce in what follows.
I would be remiss if I didn't warn my readers that this is not your typical Star Wars fluff. I am making a serious effort to develop fully humanized characters with all their flaws, some of which may not be suitable for children-a good example being a character introduced later on named Jaslin Paradas, a female Imperial Naval officer who is also a ryl spice junkie and is trying to keep her direct superior from finding out, though her superiors far higher up know of it and use her addiction to keep her in line. What I am saying is this: this is a darker version of Star Wars that focuses on the flaws that make us all human, so reader be warned.
I'm not sure how a synopsis works on , but if I had to publish one, it would look like this:
Of Droids and Men chronicles the fallout of the Rise of the Empire on a personal level, showing that beneath the shiny white exterior of the Palpatine's reign lies corruption and hardship on both sides of the conflict. As an unknown military power called the Ion Ascendancy struggles with what it means to be human, not as a species, but as a concept, they search for an emotionally traumatized Jensaari apprentice who knows too much about them and threatens the secret of their existence that has lasted for three centuries. She, in turn, is hunted by a vicious Inquisitor whose own apprentice struggles with addiction and self-loathing. The young Jensaari is forced to take shelter with a smuggler whose past is not what it seems-a human known as much for his ways with the ladies as for his incredible skill at evading Imperial entanglements. It's a life he's carefully crafted after escaping Order 66, but helping her threatens to bring chaos back into his life after struggling for years to make peace with his own existence and failings. Set against the backdrop of scum and villainy in the Outer Rim four years before the Battle of Yavin, the race is on to see who reaches the Jensaari girl first-the Empire, who want her turned or dead, or the Ion Ascendancy, whose intentions are a mystery?
Feel free to tell me what you think; just be gentle, dear readers, as I am trying to craft something special and capture lightning in a bottle. Is there something that you really liked? Something you didn't? Your comments will help hone my writing (hopefully), making for a better product overall. I'm perfectly willing to entertain constructive criticism, but please don't just say, I hated that chapter, or I thought that [insert noun] was crap. Tell me in detail why you thought this and give me a convincing argument why it should be different. I may change it if there is good enough reason, especially if there is a glaring canonical error.
Also, please do not take offense if I don't post too many comments like these...I would like to let my work stand on it's own without too much information. If you absolutely must know the answer to a burning question, PM me and I will try to answer it with ruining any surprises I have in store for you.
Thank you, and enjoy! Without further ado, I give you Star Wars: Of Droids and Men! Now, cue the music...!
Chapter One
Circa 5 BBY, somewhere between Ryloth and Drexel…
A small freighter came out of hyperspace at the edge of an uncharted planetary system. The ship wasn't pretty, resembling an ugly green brick that tapered to a blunted point at the front end where the cockpit was located. MUD DUCK was painted on its side in sloppy yellow letters, and the engine exhaust ports were thickly coated with blackened crud. The SoroSuub NUB-7 wasn't designed to be aesthetically pleasing; it had been built during the build-up to the Clone Wars, and engineered to be durable. Aesthetic values had taken a backseat to defense capabilities, and this particular ship exemplified that utter lack of beauty.
Its pilot and owner was Lan Feldris, a human hyperspace scout and member of the august Hyperspace Navigators Guild—one of its best pilots, in his opinion, and he wasn't even a Duro. He didn't need to be able to calculate hyperspace coordinates in his head like those gray-skin, big-headed aliens were reputed to be able to do. His ship had enough sophisticated scanner equipment in it to make an Imperial exo-scout blush in shame, and he'd just purchased a state-of-the-art navicomputer custom built by the Xi Char. Stang, but that had cost a pretty penny.
His red and white R2 droid warbled questioningly.
"What do you mean, are we lost yet?" he scoffed, checking the scanners to make sure that there was no debris he was in imminent danger of running into. He took a bite of the happy-patty from Biscuit Baron. "I know exactly where we are. A thousand light years above the galactic plane, a third of the way from Ryloth to Drexel." He finished the sandwich and tossed the wrapper over his shoulder to join the rest of the trash littering the inside of the ship. "I'll reach Drexel long before that garbage-scow pilot, Lira Becket." He grinned at the thought of the cute guildswoman stamping her little foot in anger because he'd beaten her once again, and this route would be far more valuable than the small-time routes around Arkanis. He couldn't help it that he was the best there was.
The droid whistled a doubtful, four-note comment.
He laughed. "Really, TooGee? She's good, but she's not as good as me." He switched the sensors to scan-mode and pressed the REC button to begin recording everything.
The sensor computers went to work, documenting the minor gravitational fluctuations of the red point of light at the center of the system to count the number of bodies in orbit. He knew they weren't going to find much, though; a red dwarf's planets were usually nothing but scorched rocks, and there was rarely any gas giants or asteroid belts, things that might have resource value.
Too bad, he thought. The guild paid out bonuses for discovering planets and other objects on a sliding scale, with habitable planets bringing in tens of thousands of credits. The real money, though, was in selling those charts on the black market to smugglers and pirates; they paid handsomely for new places to hide from the Empire or build a base, and often didn't care about habitability, which could turn a barren system like this into quick cash.
He stood up. "Come on, you old clanker," he sighed, patting the droid affectionately atop its dome. "Let's go see where we're going next." It would take several hours for the ship's sensor array to fully document the system, but he was far ahead of schedule and wanted to make a copy of the location and characteristics of this system. He had a certain customer-cum-pirate in mind that he could sell the data to for some money.
He headed into the dimly-lit main hold, which was cramped from the large holoprojector he'd installed awhile back. More fast food litter was strewn about the floor here, too. He'd have to clean soon, but why do today what he could put off until tomorrow? Besides, his version of cleaning wasn't all that hard—go into space, lock up everything valuable, and open the main cargo door to blow all the litter into the void. Worked every time.
He activated the holoprojector, and a star-field appeared above it, a green arrow in the center of it indicating his current location. A red line extended away from the arrow and off the side, delineating his flight path from Ryloth. He tapped a button and the view zoomed in until the solar system was displayed, showing a red dwarf at its center.
"Only one planet so far," he mused. It was far too close to the star to be of any value whatsoever, pirate or otherwise.
TooGee buzz-chirped.
"What do you mean, we've been lucky so far?" he scoffed.
More warbling.
"Hey, that could've happened to anyone! It's not my fault that there was an asteroid field there." He went to the chill-box and took out a bottle of Hoth Iced Ale. "The charts were old, and we came out all right." The droid had been referring to an asteroid field they'd found several jumps back that wasn't indicated on some drift charts he'd purchased on Ryloth from a rather shady twi'lek named Doolan.
The R2 whistled dubiously.
"Hey, you're the one who wanted to avoid that star cluster. We could've cut closer and shaved some time off the transit."
The droid buzzed rudely and rolled over to the holoprojector, plugged into the SCOMP link, and brought up the star chart again.
"What spectral anomalies ahead?"
A red circle appeared around a tiny pink blob, which grew magnified, resolving into a vast nebula. The droid chirped.
"Are you rusty?" he laughed. "That's the Vega Nebula! The whole area is riddled with hyperspace anomalies, but it's way below the galactic plane. We won't be anywhere near it."
The Vega Nebula had been discovered by a Duro hyperspace scout named Nolo Vega almost a thousand years ago. It was a vast reddish cloud that acted as a giant stellar nursery, home to hundreds of protostars and pulsars, and was surrounded by countless hyperspace anomalies, nearly invisible dust clouds, and who knew what other dangers. There'd been rumors that pirates had once used the nebula as a base, but he was pretty sure that was a load of grade A bantha plop. They would have to have nerves of durasteel when flying through that soup.
There was only one way he knew of to reach the nebula without frying a hyperdrive core or having the sensors scorched blind from all the radiation pouring out of the protostars, and even he didn't know the exact route because it changed dramatically over as little as weeks thanks to the stellar winds. Vega had only reached the nebula through blind luck, and the route he'd used had long since vanished due to stellar and galactic drift.
The only reason it wasn't being explored by the Empire was because it was almost impossible to reach unless you had intimate knowledge of the very near proximity, and it was in a strategically unimportant region of space at the edge of the galaxy. Moreover, being a stellar nursery, it was unlikely to have any resources that wouldn't require more sums of money to exploit than could be made from profit, so there was no incentive to find a route to it.
The droid shrilled a rapid-fire series of tones.
"Radio communications?" he laughed. "Are you serious? There's nothing there, pal. You're hearing bursts of radio-frequency noise from the pulsars."
TooGee chirped indignantly.
"I didn't say that, you tin can! I said you're hearing pulsars! That's why there appears to be patterns—they pulse in strange, repeating rhythms that are very unique."
More electronic protests came from the droid.
"Yeah? Then what language were these so-called communications in?"
The droid issued a series of stuttering buzzes.
He laughed and threw up his hands. "I didn't say you were a 3PO droid. Relax, will you? All I am saying is that you're chasing phantoms. Trust me on this. There's nothing in the nebula." He took a sip of the ale.
The ship's proximity alarm went off.
"Stang!" he yelled, jumping up and running to the cockpit. Nothing had hit the ship, thankfully, but what could it be? he wondered, looking out the front. His jaw dropped at what he saw to port. "Palpatine's beard!"
Less than ten kilometers away was an old Venator-class Star Destroyer, or had been. Its hull surface was knobby and resembled coral growth from the extensive durasteel plate patches welded on. The red paint and emblems of the Grand Army of the Republic were gone, replaced by a strange, segmented blue triangle-on-white-circle symbol. The most dramatic change, though, was that the twin conning towers at the back of the ship were still there, but had been joined at the top to form one large, wide bridge, resembling the more modern Star Destroyers' superstructure.
He suddenly had a bad feeling about this. "Hail them, TooGee," he said, hopping into the pilot's chair. He banked the ship to port to pass alongside the Star Destroyer so that they could get a good sensor reading on him. His transponder was clearly labeled HNG, so he was immune to most regional governments when conducting official hyperspace scouting business.
He checked the Star Destroyer's transponder, too, but the computer squawked in protest, telling him that it didn't recognize the signal.
The droid warbled negatively.
"No response, huh? What about other channels? No? Well, try using the emergency channel."
The computer beeped as the overload alarm went off, blowing several breakers.
"Blast!" he yelled, ice forming in the pit of his stomach. "They're jamming us! Put up the deflectors!" He pushed the throttle wide open and the engines roared to life, rumbling through the floor and rocketing the ship forward. "Get us out of here, TooGee!"
The droid trilled nervously.
"I don't know! Back the way we came! Anywhere is better than—"
The ship lurched and the controls flickered as ion fire crackled over the surface of the ship. The engines sputtered.
"Oh, no you don't," he hissed, backing the throttle off, then pushing it forward again. The engines roared back to life, but a beeping alarm drew his eyes to the indicator board. "Aw, son of a—"
The R2 shrilled.
"Yeah, I see it! I see it!" The hyperdrive was off-line. He banked sharply and headed into the system, hoping for an asteroid belt or an ice ring around a planet he could hide in. "We haven't done anything, and there's no sector authority out here, so I don't know who these abos are."
He flipped several breakers, trying to restore power to the radio, which suddenly crackled to life. A woman's voice came on as her image appeared above the mini-holoprojector. "Attention, Mud Duck," the red-skinned twi'lek woman said, turning away to talk to someone off-image. "Mud Duck? Really?" she sneered. "Ridiculous." She turned back to face him. "Attention, Mud Duck. You have entered restricted space. Power down your engines, lower your shields, and prepare for boarding." She wore a royal blue uniform from the Alderaanian navy, which had been disbanded after the Clone Wars.
He doubted that she'd ever been in the Alderaanian navy. He toggled the radio. "Look, whoever you are. I am Lan Feldris of the Hyperspace Navigators Guild, charter number esk-esk-seven-five—"
"I don't give a flying bantha about you or your charter," the twi'lek snapped. "You are under arrest, and you are my prisoner. If you flee, I'll be more than glad to do the galaxy a favor by ridding it of that rancor-ugly ship! Cut transmission!" The image vanished.
"Angle the deflectors to the rear, TooGee," he said as more bluish ion fire streaked past all around the ship. He began to rock the ship up and down and from side to side in what he hoped were good defensive maneuvers. "Have you got the hyperspace coordinates, yet?" His ship had several quasi-legal modifications that allowed it to fly like a Nubian fighter, but he was no star jockey.
The droid chirped.
"Thirty sec—! We don't have thirty seconds, in case you haven't noticed!" It was only a matter of time before they were pulsed by one of those ion cannons, and then it was game over. These people obviously had no respect for the Hyperspace Navigators Guild, so he doubted he would be greeted with smiles. Stupid Lira Becket. She was the one who challenged him to this ridiculous contest, knowing full well she couldn't win. This was her fault!
TooGee warbled warningly.
"Oh, wonderful," he groaned, wishing now that he'd bought a fourth-degree droid to man the servo-turrets. Fighters were the last thing he needed.
The ship rocked violently and the lights flickered as three Vulture-class droid fighters screamed by, targeting him with their ion blasters.
"Oh, come on!" he yelled in frustration. "That ain't kiffing fair!" Where in blazes had they dug those things up? And who'd modified them to have ion blasters? "Have you re-initialized the hyperdrive core?"
The droid whistled affirmative.
His heart raced as he began a series of maneuvers he hoped would keep the fighters from hitting him again. He tried the emergency radio channel, and this time, the radio's front panel exploded in a shower of sparks as the Venator jammed his transmissions again. Well, it wasn't really like there was anyone else to hear him out here.
Suddenly, the ship lurched and began shaking as the engines struggled against the tractor beam they'd locked onto him, though this lasted only a brief second until the ship was hit in rapid succession by multiple ion pulses. The lights went out as the power died.
"Well, that's the end of that," he said, fear clenching his stomach as he watched the Star Destroyer approach, growing bigger as the tractor beam reeled him in. "This is bad," he groaned, panic rising in his throat.
The droid agreed with a doleful whistle.
He grabbed an emergency lantern out of a stowage box and turned it on, then tried the auxiliary radio, which was shielded and ran on a battery, but its range didn't extend out of the system, and there were no friendlies around. He activated the landing gears as his ship floated serenely through the nose door of the Venator, which had its atmospheric containment field activated.
The Mud Duck was set down gently in the center of the long hangar bay. Outside the windows, he could see at least one hundred black-lacquered B1 battle droids in squared groups of twenty, each armed with a blaster rifle.
"Poodoo," he swore, running into the main hold and lifting a floor plate to reveal a hidden compartment. He pulled out an E-11 blaster rifle, bought off of one of his customers, and activated it, then ran back into the cockpit in time to see another squad of four B1 battle droids—these red-lacquered—followed by the twi'lek woman, come marching through a side door.
What in blazes had he stumbled into? This was no small-time pirating operation or smuggler's base. This had all the trappings of a military organization. This shouldn't be happening, he cursed under his breath. He was just a scout! His hands trembled as he held the blaster rifle; he'd never thought he'd need it. "Record everything, TooGee!"
The twi'lek woman walked up to the front of the ship, just below the cockpit, and looked up at him. She lifted a hand-held radio. "Open the doors, Mud Duck," she ordered imperiously, her voice coming through the emergency back-up radio in the cockpit.
He tried to think of who controlled this region of space, but it was empty, or supposed to be. There wasn't supposed to be anyone out here, so who were these people? He presumed there were more—it couldn't just be her. He toggled the radio. "Um, I think this has all been just a big misunderstanding. I'm a hyperspace scout and—"
"There's been no misunderstanding," the woman said, cutting him off. "Open the door and come out with your hands up, or I'll blow the doors myself." She held up a thermal detonator for him to see.
His eyes widened. "Stang, woman!" he shouted in alarm. That thermal detonator would do more than just blow the door open! He broke into a cold sweat. "Okay, okay! Just relax!" he said. "What assurances do I have that you won't harm me?"
She laughed scornfully. "You get none! Now, open that kiffing door and get your carcass out here, without that rifle in your hands, or I will assure you that you will be damaged!"
He sighed. "Trapped between a bantha and a rancor," he muttered. If he survived this, he swore he was retiring and moving to—
"Now, Mud Duck!"
"Fine! I'm coming out!" He stood up. "Go hide in the engine room, TooGee."
The droid trilled its agreement.
He tossed the rifle in the main hold and went to the airlock, opening it and lowering the ramp, then walked down it and stood on the deck with his palms up. In the hangar, all trappings of the GAR were gone, and there were dozens of regular and droid starfighters. Strange, geometric patterns adorned the bulkheads and beams, resembling a series of triangles oriented in different directions, some filled in. His heart pounded in his ears as the woman stalked over, escorted by her battle droids, and he noted her malevolent grin. "My name is Lan Feldris. I have no contraband aboard my ship. Well, the rifle, but that's it. I have my license—"
"Shut up, you kiffing meat bag," she snarled, snatching a rifle from a battle droid and aiming it at him.
"No, wait!" he started to say.
She fired. There was a flash of white, then everything went black.