The Polar Carp

(A Fan Fiction story based on and around the character of Admiral Raddus (from Rogue One). The story takes place several years before the events of "Rogue One". Some elements (i.e. Admiral Raddus' family and his first name) are from my imagination and therefore non-canonical; but I have also made an attempt to follow the more firmly established details of the Star Wars Universe.) (Star Wars created by George Lucas)

Chapter One: Returning Home

Captain Marney Raddek hustled the last group of enslaved escapees on board his garbarge scow, which was known to his crew as "The Polar Carp", after its fish-like captain. Like most people of his world, Marney was an amphibious humanoid with bulbous, fish-like eyes and webbed hands and feet, known throughout the galaxy as a mon calamari or mon cal for short. His skin was a slate-blue, grayish color, which meant that he was one of a race of mon cals that inhabited the Northern Polar region on the water-world of Mon Cala.

There were people of all kinds on board The Polar Carp today, many of them from the mon calamari and quarren races of Marney's own home-world; but the rest of them were an odd assortment of humans, twi'leks, wookiees, with even a few ewoks thrown into the mix. Marney had transported many people over the years, from every planet imaginable.

Marney always tried his best to make sure he took at least one small group of prisoners away from the Empire's slave camps every time he carted their trash away. The prisoners were most often youngsters, as the Guards preferred them to be taken off their hands so that they did not need to bother with them. Many of these children were orphans whose parents had died working in harsh conditions, and so Marney Raddek had an "unofficial" agreement with the Empire to take some of the "trash kids" along with the garbage to dispose of them, as one cynical guard put it. Younger children were not much use as slaves, for they often did not have the strength to labor as hard and as long as their oppressive masters wanted.

Marney would cackle at the guards' morose jokes about the little slaves, using his best "evil lout" persona to convince them that he was up to no good so that they would let him have the kids. After Marney had secured the children safely on his ship, he would then drop them off at various social-service investigation offices or, if possible, return them to their parents. When bringing them to social services agencies, he always tried to make sure that he was handing them over to trustworthy individuals and groups rather than those that would exploit them further. He refused to give them over to anyone who could not be trusted to work in the children's best interests; but it was a difficult responsibility determining who they could and could not trust.

"All right, Kiddies, relax!" he told his current passengers once they were settled and "The Polar Carp" was flying away from the prison camp, "We're going to bring you somewhere safe. In the mean time, crew member Salken Rale will give you some rations to eat and show you his games. Sal, get to it!"

An eighteen-year-old, orange-and-white mon cal boy stepped forward, dressed in plain grey trousers and a sleeveless shirt. He was himself a former escapee-orphan who had been taken in by Captain Marney and later trained as a member of the crew.

"Yes, Captain Raddek," Sal acknowledged while Marney ambled off to the main bridge of his scow.

Radka Marne Raddus, now known simply as "Marney Raddek", was the son of the famous mon calamari Admiral, Charcorr Raddus.

The younger Raddus had been born in the underwater city of Nystullum, in the polar regions of the planet Mon Cala (or Dac as it was also known in several of the world's dialects). Radka had grown up in a warrior clan and was therefore expected to serve either in the military or as a political leader. Radka disliked the silly charades that permeated politics, and so he had opted to attend the surface-based Northern Bay Military Academy, situated in the floating "City of the Ice-Star".

Ice-Star City was really more of a floating village than a city, but its folksy charms had agreed with the parochial tastes of a teenage Radka.

He had gone out on drinking sprees during his off-duty hours, and he would return to his dormitory drunk more often than not. He was, however, a little better at hiding it than his peers: he would get caught and disciplined only every other week.

He managed to graduate from the academy in spite of his lousy academic record, but only because he excelled at underwater battles when he was sober. After he developed a bit more discipline as an adult, he moved up through the ranks of the Mon Cala Navy until he became a captain and was transferred to the Outer Space Division. He was trained in and soon commanded a small warship, which he did with great vigor and bravado—until one day, when he made a strategic error during a space-skirmish with members of a smugglers' ring. He was hung over from a late-night drinking spree while in command of "The Snowstar", a ship of superior weaponry compared to the smugglers' salvaged craft, and because of it he was foolishly overconfident in his directions to the crew. Before he realized his mistake, he had given an order which left the ship vulnerable on one side. His opponents seized the opportunity to strike the vessel, badly damaging it in the process.

He and his crew survived their ordeal by recovering as best they could and defending themselves with their greater firing power, but the smugglers that they had been ordered to capture escaped with their entire load of illegal substances. The mission had been a relatively simple one but Captain Radka Marne Raddus had screwed it up nonetheless. When his superior officers learned the reason for his shameful performance, they discharged him from the military as punishment. He was told that he could re-apply to the Ocean Division of the Navy after a year had passed and he had proven that he no longer drank alcohol excessively; but he would need to begin all over again from the most humble ranks.

The worst part about it was explaining to his father, who at that time was the Mayor of the underwater city Nystullum, how he had been bested by a group of half-rate pirates. His father Raddus was furious and banished him from the family home after he and Radka had fought bitterly one night over the failure.

Radka had left his family and his clan in disgrace, departing Nystullum in order to take a job on a garbage scow until he was able to sort out his drinking problem.

Fifteen years later, the self-renamed Marney Raddek was in command of the garbage scow, "The Polar Carp". At least on the scow, he reasoned, he could keep his captaincy. His father had practically disowned him, but Marney Raddek refused to dwell on it. He had cut down on and finally quit his drinking habit within the past ten years thanks to his twi'lek wife, Lyna, and her teenage daughter Rixxi, as she was known by her oddly-matched mother and stepfather.

Lyna had been born on a far drier world than that of her husband, a planet known as Ryloth. Her head was equipped with a pair of thick, prehensile tentacles which fell down below her back, called in her language "lekku". Her skin was of a light-blue color and her ears were rather cone-like. Lyna Kooloo had been rescued by Marney fifteen years ago from a slave dealer and she subsequently married him as an expression of her gratitude. Many people assumed that she was the scow captain's paid companion but in reality they were a closely bonded, married couple. Lyna's daughter Rixxi had been only two years old at the time, and Marney had officially adopted her at an out-of-the-way social services outpost. It was not long after the marriage that he also adopted the orphan named Salken Rale, a mon cal boy who was one year older than Rixxi.

Since then, he and his strange family had not been back to Mon Cala but had instead created a home of sorts by a small lake on Lyna's home-world of Ryloth. The Empire was in control of Ryloth at present, which had meant that the couple were forced to watch what they did and who they spoke to when they were there. As a result of the restrictions, the family had finally decided to abandon their home on Ryloth a few years ago and live aboard The Polar Carp full-time, carting garbage for the Empire and saving young orphans on the side.

Now, however, they were going to have to go back to Marney's home-world, as the number of mon cal and quarren orphans that they had just picked up at the prison camp was fairly high; and as well, the ship needed to be overhauled and re-licensed, which because of its origins could only be done from Mon Cala. It was there that he had originally bought "The Polar Carp" from the old Captain and had begun his own trash-hauling business.

Besides, as Lyna had reminded him, Mon Cala had superior social work agencies which could handle looking after all the children and placing them in culturally appropriate homes.

"Well, Marney, you old fish!" she teased him fondly as they made their way to the ocean-planet, "It looks as though I'll get to meet your family at last. Do you think I'll be welcomed with open arms...and webbed, clawed fingers? Or will they throw me to the predatory sea monsters?"

Marney knew that his wife was excited at the prospect of traveling to his world. She had for many years questioned him about it extensively. She was interested in how his people had managed to repel the Imperial Forces from their beleaguered world during its occupation, and she especially wanted to meet his mother and father. He was fairly certain that his mother would grudgingly accept the relationship, but he knew for certain that his father would not.

"Once I get the ship into the servicing bay and find out the bad news as to how much it will cost me to fix and re-license," Marney told her as she manned the navigation console, "and once we deliver the kids to the Family Services Office, I will contact my mother to see if she will permit us entry into the city...my father, The Admiral, will be off on a military adventure, so he won't be there."

"Don't be too sure," Lyna replied, "I heard over the news comm that an Admiral Raddus was returning to Mon Cala for a special meeting of the War Council."

"Great," Raddek muttered as they drew nearer to his dreaded home-world, "The Admiral will be tickled pink when he sees us together. His son, the trash-collector, comes home with an adopted son, a wife and kid from a completely different species, and a ship full of escaped orphans from the Empire's prison camps. He'll be deliriously happy!"

"Will you proudly defend us from his displeasure, Marney?" Lyna asked him pointedly, "and will you acknowledge me as your wife in front of him?"

"You know I'll always be proud of you and the young ones, Lyna," her husband chided her, "and I don't give an electric eel's ass what my father has to say about it."

And, with that statement having clarified his position on the matter of his father, The Polar Carp glided into its home space-port. After an absence of nearly fifteen years, Marney Raddek had finally returned home to Mon Cala.