"Jedi are forbidden attachments," Masayoshi said, with conviction.
"Mmhm." Gotou said, one leg folded under himself, elbow on the table, chin in his hand. He wasn't really listening, because this was at least the fifth time that the tow-headed, wide-eyed country kid had started in on this line of reasoning in the three days they'd been trapped together in this crummy transport ship. Gotou had stopped keeping count of a lot of things, but the time until they dropped out of hyperspace at their destination was not one of them. "Jedi are forbidden a lot of things, kid."
Masayoshi's head whipped around. He'd been talking at Gotou more than with him, and Gotou immediately regretted engaging. Masayoshi leaned forward in the jump seat, blue eyes wide and glittering slightly. "So you know about the Jedi?"
Four alarm klaxons went off in Gotou's head, but he was in too deep now. "Just stories. You know as well as I do that they died out a long time ago." He looked away from Masayoshi, at the opposite bulkhead wall, and thought idly to himself about how much nicer it was when he ran these supply runs solo, without the nagging voice of a passenger. "I don't get why you're so obsessed with them anyway, they've been extinct for longer than you or I have been around."
"Because they were heroes ," Masayoshi said, insistent. He looked smaller than he was, folded up in the jump seat, wearing older, ill-fitting clothes. It was quite the different look from the holodrama idol that Gotou knew him to be – well, at least that was the case before things had taken an abrupt nosedive in the career department. That sort ofhappened when you got on the wrong side of an occupying army.
A former model and holodrama actor who had to ship off-planet in a hurry, and found the one transport ship who didn't ask any questions in an entire launch bay. Another in a long list of Gotou's recent regrets. He didn't ask questions if the credits were good, but he was starting to get the idea that maybe he should.
"Well, the Jedi won't save you if the First Order's propaganda machine gets a hold of you," Gotou said idly, scratching his jaw with a finger. He wondered for a moment if there was a bounty, then felt a little ashamed at the thought. Gotou wasn't exactly wanting for money, he made a meager living in a transport ship but it was enough to get by on, and he kept his nose out of interplanetary affairs as best he could.
"They don't need to save me!" Masayoshi said. His voice had shifted to slightly indignant. "I'm gonna be one!"
Gotou straightened, just a little. He looked square-on at Masayoshi, then couldn't keep the snicker in any longer. "You?" Gotou somehow managed not to break into outright gales of laughter, but only by a little bit. "You, a Jedi? " Another suppressed chuckle. "Doesn't that require, you know, a little..." he grasped around for the term a bit, then raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. "Woo~woo?"
"Woo-woo?" Masayoshi repeated, scandalized. "And why can't I be one? He folded his arms and glared at Gotou, insulted at the insinuation that he wasn't capable. "I'll have you know I've been training for this sort of thing for a very long time!"
"Really," Gotou said, dryly, unimpressed. He wiggled his fingers again, but did not say 'woo-woo.' Because he'd probably laugh. Again. "Exactly how have you been training to be something that's been extinct so long your daddy probably never even saw one?"
Masayoshi's brow furrowed, drew in tight. Gotou inhaled his words a little, winced, but didn't retract them. There were so many shattered families in the galaxy that it seemed a miracle that one would have surviving family members. "I never knew my dad," Masayoshi said finally. "My grandpa raised me. He believed in them. The Jedi, that is."
"And he wanted you to be one, because of his own misguided sense of heroism," Gotou filled in the blanks. "And without any woo-woo."
"Would you stop calling it that?" Masayoshi snapped. "He didn't want me to be one, either. Said they're all cursed." Masayoshi chewed his lip and looked away, down along the tight curve of the ship toward the cockpit. Gotou waited for him to speak again, to say something else about this ridiculous plan for this country-boy-idol turned runaway to be a Jedi , of all things, but instead Masayoshi folded up into himself, half-turning away in the swivel of the jump seat, and staring along the bulkhead toward the back of the ship.
Gotou felt a little bad, but not enough so to offer an apology. He stood up and headed for the cockpit. They'd be dropping out of light speed soon – a supply drop at a small waystation, before continuing on another jump toward the edge of the Outer Rim – and the navigation system on this piece of crap transport ship wasn't always the most reliable. He hesitated a moment before ducking into the cockpit and glanced back, but Masayoshi had pulled his legs up onto the chair, arm folded around them, hugging them tight to his chest; and his head lying atop his knees with his face turned away, tawny hair shadowing all that Gotou could see. He shrugged, although for what reason he wasn't sure, as no one could see him do it, then lowered his head so he didn't knock it against the low clearance of the cockpit.
Jedi , he thought, and snorted in derision.
He'd bought the transport ship when he was nineteen, angry at everything and wanting to get away. He had wide-eyed idealism at his side, he was going to go join the Resistance, be a pilot, be a hero . Reality had settled in when he realized that most of the galaxy wasn't interested in the politics of two warring factions inasmuch as it bothered the trade routes and bartering that happened between the many different worlds and cultures. So he worked on the piece of crap ship, and hauled freight and supplies between worlds, saw the glamorous side of the universe known as dirty, dingy spaceports and kept his nose as clean as one could, skirting the line of smuggling.
Gotou had been loading crates – freight of indeterminate origin, he never asked close about what he was hauling, even though plausible deniability with the First Order was not a thing that existed – when he saw Masayoshi bartering frantically with a pair of smugglers two docks down. It was old G'resh the Bothan and his partner droid, and they were sizing up Masayoshi like a new piece of meat. Probably meaning to take his money and then turn him over to whomever would pay the highest bounty; or possibly just rob him and jettison him out the airlock.
"Where you headed?" Gotou had asked, and the Bothan swore at him and stormed off. Masayoshi had glanced after the smugglers, before looking back at Gotou, eyes tired and old despite his young face.
"Anywhere but here," he said. "My credits are good, I can pay, I just need-"
"Don't know, don't care," Gotou said. "Money's money, help me get these crates loaded. I'm prepping to launch."
Of course, after a few hours good sleep, and a meal, Masayoshi was talkative and bubbly, and Gotou regretted ever bringing the noisy human on board, but he'd made his bed and would have to deal with it, at least until he got his cargo to its destination and would bid the other man farewell.
"I'm surprised you fly this thing by yourself," Masayoshi said, standing in the threshold of the cockpit, head ducked to not hit the bulkhead ceiling. "Aren't most standard Corellian transports a two-pilot rig?"
Gotou ignored him, a navigational chart up as he scrutinized it, trying to plot the best route around some of the more frequently contested planetary spheres. He'd had the holonet up earlier, and while most of the news reports were filtered through various agencies and propaganda machines, it was better than nothing. "Are you just talking to fill the silence, or was that a proper question?" Gotou asked, tapping some of the planets in the three-dimensional map before inputting coordinates into the navcomputer.
"I asked a proper question," Masayoshi said indignantly.
"I already told you, no questions about me, or my ship." Gotou tapped another planet and considered it. Masayoshi watched him in silence.
"Why not?"
"Are you twelve?" Gotou said, and glanced over at Masayoshi with a mix of annoyance and aggravation. "You don't need to know jack squat about me, what if the First Order picks you up and decides they're gonna punish whoever helped you? I'm not putting my neck on the chopping block, here. I already know too much about," he gestured in the air, arm flung back toward Masayoshi without his head turned in that direction. "You and your woo~woo plans."
"It's not called that," Masayoshi said.
"You think I don't know that?" Gotou finally turned, and pinned Masayoshi with a full-on glare. "Get out of my cockpit, some of us are trying to do some actual work, around here."
Masayoshi said, strangely calm, "we're not going to make it to the waystation. You need to pull us from hyperspace now."
"Who's flying this thing, me or you?" Gotou was more than irritated now. He didn't get angry, but this clown from some out-of-the-way planet who was used to some measure of fame was really beginning to rub him the wrong way. "You need to stop -"
Abruptly, the entire vessel shook. A warning alarm went off, loud and insistent, and Gotou spun in his chair, swiping his arm through the holographic map to dispel it, and located the lever that took them to light speed. He yanked it down and the flashing, elongated tunnel of lights dropped instantly to single pinpricks, a canopy of dots on an infinite canvas of dark.
They had dropped from light speed at the edge of the system. Gotou slammed his hand against the navigational map until it spit out a name for him: the Haval system, a system with a large, fading star. The only easily habitable location was a pair of moons that orbited a large gas giant; but with the system's sun dying a slow, natural death the residents of the planet's two moons were in the slow process of being relocated.
Naturally, that meant the abandoned moonscapes played haven to a host of scum and villainy, who all knew that the dying star still had centuries to go before it went supernova and obliterated the planets still caught in uneven orbit. The waystation was not in this system and Gotou tended to avoid the twin moons of Haval for a host of reasons, the first being that it had been claimed by, and was run by, Hutts.
"Okay, we're out of light speed," Gotou said sourly. The alarm was still going off, several lights flashing insistently across his console. Gotou made a fist and slammed it down on the corner of the console and the lights stopped flashing. A moment later, the alarm cut off as well. Masayoshi looked nervously at the rig, then glanced at the ceiling.
"Is the ship all right?"
"She's fine, it's all fine. " Gotou half-turned. " Why did we jump out here ? Do you know where we are ?"
Masayoshi was staring out the forward viewport. He moved forward a little, into the cockpit proper, and seated himself without permission in the co-pilot's station. Gotou bristled a little, but Masayoshi didn't touch anything, captivated by the swirling colors of the gas giant Haval. "Where are we?"
"Hey," Gotou said authoritatively, and Masayoshi's attention snapped back to him. "Focus, kid."
"Stop calling me kid , I'm not that young!" He frowned. "Why did we drop out of light speed?"
Gotou stared at him. "You told me to, just a moment ago."
"Oh." Masayoshi rubbed his hand over his nose. "Something must have happened to where we're going, then. Grandpa used to get upset when I did that, zone out and say something and it would come true." He frowned, and squinted out the viewport at the planet. "That's... not where we're going, is it?"
"It's where we're going now , since it has a refueling station. There's enough travelers about there, I'm sure you can find someone who would take you..." Gotou glanced to the side, at Masayoshi, then continued. "The rest of the way, wherever it is you're headed."
"Oh," Masayoshi said again, his voice quiet and small.
He didn't want to run. It didn't seem right, the fact that he had turned tail and fled like that. Masayoshi had idolized heroes since he was a small thing, standing at the table in the small homestead he shared with his grandfather, chin on the tabletop as he watched the holonet reports with wide-eyes. A lot of the stories were forbidden, but romanticized... the Jedi, the Rebellion, heroes all.
Masayoshi's grandfather hadn't discouraged him, not quite. He celebrated the idea of heroes, standing up for what was right, he taught Masayoshi from the time he was small that he was destined to be strong, to stand for something... but whenever Masayoshi asked about the Jedi, the old man's eyes would darken, and the conversation ended there.
Their world wasn't exactly backwater, but it wasn't the center of the galaxy. Masayoshi didn't know much of what lay beyond his own horizon, he worked hard around his grandfather's house, took his schooling seriously, and was approached to act in holodramas not long after his grandfather passed. It didn't seem like a serious thing, the silly little movies, but they got popular quickly, and suddenly he was being scouted by a major holodrama agency, based out of the Republic's homeworld system.
His sudden boost in popularity made him a bit of a target, something that Masayoshi didn't mind – he was young, and brash, and he stood for what was right ... Except, the holodrama agency didn't exist anymore, now. The entire system was gone. Obliterated. The First Order arrived on his out-of-the-way home planet, and the actors were labeled dissidents, and were summarily rounded up.
While Masayoshi wasn't exactly a pursued fugitive, they had been looking for him at the spaceport that took him off-planet. He was to be made an example of, just like all the rest; and there wasn't much that Masayoshi could do letting himself be marched off to execution like that. So he ran. Like a coward.
There was something that drew him to the scruffy-looking transport pilot in the spaceport. He could have ignored the man interfering in his arranging passage off-world, but – he'd had moments like this before, where the universe resolved itself into one point of clarity, a direction that he was intended to go.
The Force exists in all things, his grandfather had said, peeling fruit at the table, eyes on the small blade and not on Masayoshi. You must not ignore it, when it calls to you.
And it had called to him, and put him aboard this creaky old transport ship. It had called to him again, a warning,avoid the Patarna system; a waystation that they were headed toward. Sitting in the copilot station of the cockpit, eyes on the gas giant that filled most of the forward viewscreen, Masayoshi felt it call for the third time in as many days, and this time he said nothing, sat on it, focused it inward. You're meant to be here, whatever here means.
Gotou didn't pay any attention to Masayoshi. He was concentrated on the task of actually flying the ship, flipping switches and frowning and scowling as if all there was to piloting was making a face like he'd sat on a tack. He caught Masayoshi glancing at him, and his expression darkened further. "Once we land," he said, words sharp. "You're off my ship."
"But I paid you," Masayoshi said, and Gotou looked away, grunted a little, and didn't answer.
Haval was between the moon and its star, giant and luminous. The moon was dark, caught in a night that lasted weeks at a time due to its slow orbit around the gas giant; but it was dark in another sense, abandoned, desolate. Lights still lit the planet, but the air traffic was minimal. Everyone who remained here had a reason for it; either too poor to move on to greener pastures, or for other reasons.
Gotou had put a commlink in his ear, as they flew low over the city. He was negotiating with a traffic controller of some kind, in a language that wasn't the common tongue. Masayoshi knew a fair bit of a few different languages, but he wasn't familiar with this one; and Gotou gave a snort and a cursory sign-off that was universal, despite the unfamiliar words. "I really hate Hutt territories," Gotou said, taking the commlink from his ear. "They charge an arm and a leg. And a tail," he added after a moment, and chuckled to himself.
Masayoshi perked up a little. "After you've picked up the parts you need, then where are we off to?"
"It's no concern of yours," Gotou said. "You paid me passage to get you off that rock you called a homeworld, and I did my share. Wherever you go now, that's on you."
Masayoshi chewed on his lip, and was silent.
The spaceport was noisy, bustling full of freighters and small transport ships. Masayoshi followed Gotou down the exit ramp – he didn't have baggage, save for a small satchel worn over his head – and Gotou kept going even when Masayoshi stopped at the bottom of the ramp, hesitating.
He watched the transport pilot walk off without a backward glance, then sighed and stepped off the ramp.
Haval's sky could be seen easily from the spaceport, dark with the luminous gas giant huge in the sky. It was cold, and Masayoshi shivered. He wasn't dressed for the weather. He glanced around, saw Gotou heading for a pit crew of several smaller creatures and a few things that might be droids, cobbled together from spare parts. He didn't recognize any of them, but Gotou seemed to.
Masayoshi looked back at the ship. It was an old freighter, a junker – he'd seen worse, but he'd also seen significantly better. He wanted to be back here when Gotou was done, because maybe he would have changed his mind. Something told him he needed to stick close, regardless – and then he heard a low slide whistle, that shot sharply into a high pitch. He turned his head, attention already elsewhere, and went in that direction.
Gotou looked up from his negotiations with the pit crew – they controlled the flow of parts into and out of the spaceport more so than any of the underworld bosses that ran the remnants of the world. He saw Masayoshi walk off, away from his ship, one hand on the satchel he wore over his head. There was a moment of – something, he couldn't quite describe, but then the squat mechanic chattered something at him in a broken mess of the common tongue, and Gotou had to put his attention back on deciphering its syntax first. When he looked back up at the dock, Masayoshi was gone.
The astromech droid was old, its white finish stained yellow with decades of neglect. The flowerpot-shaped head twisted around and it let loose a long slide whistle of panic as it rocked in place, unable to move forward or back.
There was an entire line of astromech droids standing against the far wall, most in a powered-down state. They were all old models, mostly R2 units with various color schemes and designations, but there were a smattering of other models mixed among them; however the only one that was powered on (despite a restraining bolt, Masayoshi noted), was the old red and once-white R5 unit.
Masayoshi's grandfather had a friend who would visit with an astromech droid. That had been an R2 unit; a popular model for decades, and as his grandfather and his friend caught up Masayoshi would talk to the droid, who would answer his questions with cheerful whistles and beeps. He'd learned binary that way, in fits and starts, and he knew enough now to know that that R5 droid certainly didn't belong with the others.
He slipped around the corner. There had to be at least fifteen droids there, and when he got closer he realized they were two deep. He'd never seen so many in his life, one or two at a time was one thing, but there was a small army present. "Hello," Masayoshi said softly, and the R5 unit's head twisted around sharply, its camera-lens eye focusing on Masayoshi. Once it got a good look at him, it let out a long string of beeps and whistles, frantic. Masayoshi crouched in front of it and put one hand on the restraining bolt, trying to find its release. "I'll get you out of here, don't worry."
"Hey!"
Masayoshi straightened and turned around. He hadn't found the release mechanism on the bolt, but he knew that he'd be able to get it off. From around the same corner he'd come was a tall, thin man with skin a pallid green color. It took a moment, but then Masayoshi realized the thick scarf worn around his neck was actually lekku , a head-tail, and the man a Twi'lek. "What are you doing to my droid?" the Twi'lek hissed through filed teeth.
"He's not your droid," Masayoshi said, indignation making him bolder than he'd be otherwise. "He said he was ambushed, and a restraining bolt was put on him!"
The Twi'lek didn't seem impressed by Masayoshi's bravado. "That is my droid," he said. "If he's damaged you'll pay."
"It isn't right, you can't just take someone's droid," Masayoshi said, hands on his hips. He noticed the Twi'lek was flicking something with one hand, and recognized the small commlink in his hand.
"Masayoshi!" Gotou said sharply. He'd come around the opposite way, the long way around the scavenger ship in the bay. Masayoshi's head swiveled toward Gotou and he lit up for a moment with happiness. "What the hell are you doing over here-"
"Is this your crewman," the Twi'lek said, and Gotou drew up short. The emotion that flickered across his face was almost too fast for Masayoshi to catch. Fear . "He is accusing me of theft, master trader."
"It is just a small misunderstanding, Wen," Gotou said with a tight smile. "He is my crewman, but he's green, never been off-planet before, you see..."
Masayoshi took a small step backward, felt the astromech droid bump into his hand. He located the restraining bolt without looking at it, and this time the release gave with no difficulty, the bolt dropping to the floor with a solid, heavy sound. The Twi'lek heard the sound, head twisting around and zeroing in on the restraining bolt on the floor. The R5 unit gave a loud whistle followed by several beeps, as it went from a two-legged restrained mode back to its usual tilted-body state of three wheels.
Several things happened at the same time.
Wen snarled something in a language that Masayoshi didn't speak, as two large, burly aliens came around the corner armed with stormtrooper-grade blaster rifles. Masayoshi ducked purely on instinct, as the first of several blaster bolts went flying through the space his head had occupied just moments before. Gotou lunged forward and shoved the Twi'lek, and he staggered back, right through the shooting range of the two Shistavanens. "Run, idiot ," Gotou shouted. Masayoshi didn't have to be told twice.
The R5 unit skittered after them, making a cacophony of beeps and whistles as the two hired guns of Wen fired in their direction. The blaster bolts hit ships and cargo around him as he ran, and other transporters (and, more likely smugglers) dodged and ducked behind cover. Gotou's ship was ready and waiting, and Gotou was two steps behind him, urging him to run faster.
Gotou ducked around the side, yanking some of the refueling hoses off of the overhang of part of the ship, but then the two lumbering aliens were around the corner, raising their blasters to fire again and he left the rest to hang. Masayoshi hesitated on the ramp, waiting for Gotou, but ducked back up to relative safety when several blaster bolts hit part of the ship, scorching the finish.
The R5 unit shot up the ramp as Gotou ran the long way around the ship, and it slid past Masayoshi into the main holding area, still yelling in binary squeaks and slide whistles. Gotou was last aboard, slamming the ramp closure button halfway up the ramp and taking the corner toward the cockpit so fast his shoulder slammed into a bulkhead. He swore – not in common – and threw himself through the opening to the cockpit and half into the pilot's seat, slapping buttons and yanking levers.
"Shields!" he yelled, as a blaster bolt scorched the forward viewport. Masayoshi hesitated in the threshold of the cockpit as Gotou yelled again, "shields !" and gestured wildly toward the co-pilot's station. Masayoshi didn't have the first clue what he was gesturing at but he dove at the console and slammed a few buttons at random, as the entire ship started to hum to life.
"I thought you said you could pilot this thing by yourself!" Masayoshi said as Gotou yelled, "the other blue lever,idiot- "
Masayoshi yanked the other blue lever and another blaster bolt ricocheted, this time off the shields. "I thought you said-" he started again, but Gotou interrupted him again, this time with; "better strap in, this isn't gonna be fun!"
The entire ship lurched and groaned as the rest of the fuel lines got yanked straight out of the ground. Gotou winced a little, as another ship rose from the fuel port at the same time. "You had to go pick a fight with Wen ," he said, as they rose above the space port.
"I wasn't picking a fight with anyone, that man was a thief ," Masayoshi said hotly, as Gotou pointed past Masayoshi without looking. "What?" Masayoshi said, head swiveling in the direction that Gotou was pointing. "What-?"
"Press the flashing button," Gotou said.
"I thought you said you didn't need a copilot," Masayoshi said as he did as instructed.
"I never said that," Gotou said. The ship that had launched at the same time didn't seem to be in pursuit, but he was watching both the forward viewport and the radar for anything that might crop up. "You asked if this was a two-pilot rig, I didn't say squat."
"Why are you flying a two-pilot ship solo -"
Gotou yanked up on the controls as a small starfighter shot up from below. "Shit! "
Masayoshi went back in the copilot's seat and almost slammed his head against the bulkhead behind it. He hadn't strapped in, and he thought he heard the sound of an astromech bouncing off a wall behind them somewhere. "Watch it!"
"Shut," Gotou angled the ship up, crawling up and away from the moon's atmosphere, "up. "
There was no pursuit. Masayoshi stayed silent (and now, belted in) until they were headed out and away from the moon. Gotou kept his eyes on the readout, a scowl firmly in place. "Well, we got the fuel cells half recharged," he said. "Seems like I'm going the long way 'round to get this cargo delivered, and it's your fault." He glanced up at Masayoshi, eyes narrowed.
Masayoshi shrugged loosely.
From behind them, the R5 unit blatted a noise. Gotou's head shot up, as if he had just now remembered that there was a third passenger on his ship. "Did that thing come with us?"
"I told him he could," Masayoshi said.
"You stole a droid from Wen," Gotou said, his expression swinging back around to Masayoshi, and shifting from angry to exasperated to resigned. "Fuck. "
Once safely to light speed ("I'm taking you as far as the Ovelbon system." "That sounds good, Gotou-san!") Gotou walked back to the main area of the ship. Masayoshi had already retreated back, and was sitting on the floor in front of the astromech droid, a cleaning rag in one hand and a small, less-yellow spot on the droid's surface to show how far he'd got. "I can't believe," Gotou said as he stood, arms folded. "That you stole a droid . From Wen. "
The R5 unit swung its flowerpot-shaped head in Gotou's direction, and made a rude noise at him.
"I didn't steal him," Masayoshi said, still scrubbing. "He was kidnapped. I rescued him."
"You can't kidnap a droid, a droid's not a person ," Gotou said.
The R5 unit beeped at him.
"That's not very nice," Masayoshi admonished the droid. The droid made a noise reminiscent of blowing a raspberry at Masayoshi and beeped again. "No, I'm not telling him that either." Another beep, and a whistle. Masayoshi looked over at Gotou. "His name is Sunny," he said, and this time the droid's noises sounded more cheerful.
"Great," Gotou said, and sat down. "Let me guess, this thing's carrying some secret message or missive for some important member of the Resistance and we have to help it on its mission."
Masayoshi looked up at the droid, and then over to Gotou, and made a face. "This isn't a holodrama," he said. "That sort of thing doesn't really happen." The droid blatted, and Masayoshi eyed him suspiciously. Then it whistled and chirped, and Masayoshi rolled his eyes. "No," he said, then looked back to Gotou. "Do you speak binary?"
"Do I look like I speak binary?"
"Well, you're a transporter, right? I'm sure you've had to ferry droids, it would make things easier if you knew-"
Gotou held up his hand. "The droid's not carrying a secret message, right?"
"No." Masayoshi scrubbed another spot of grime. "But he is lost."
"Great," Gotou said. "Have fun taking little lost R5 unit home. Once we get to Ovelbon, you're on your own."
Masayoshi resumed scrubbing, and somehow kept the smile off his face. After all, that was exactly what Gotou had said just a few hours ago.