'This,' thirteen year-old Cameron DeLong thought as he hung upside down from a tree, 'was not one of my best ideas.'
He didn't even bother trying to go for the rope attached to his right leg; the way this particular trap had caught him left the knot stuck right behind his ankle, where he really couldn't reach it. Admittedly, he could have used the Force to untie the knot and lower himself to ground... but he wanted to stay put and stew a bit longer.
Besides, his ring had fallen off.
A bit inconvenient, that.
But what was worse was the snicker coming from the bushes behind him. Which led him to believe that the faint trail which he'd so brilliantly sniffed out and followed had been left with malicious aforethought.
Which meant that the person snickering, one Jaq Losoda, was even more of a sneaky bastard than he'd originally thought.
Far, far too much like his late namesake.
"Okay, Jaq," he called out as best able (dangling upside down does not do wonders for one's diction, especially when annoyed). "You win."
The other boy laughed out loud as he finally stepped around Cameron and into his field of vision. He greatly favored his mother, though with straight brown eyes rather than her heterochromia. At that very moment those same eyes seemed to twinkle with sort of mischievous glee.
The two of them would often head out from the civilized parts of Xenen and spend a week or so in the local forests. They would haul in a few supplies, but would survive mostly on what they would trap or hunt themselves. Since the forests was home to plenty of small game and quite a few streams, this wasn't much of a problem. In fact, in between shooting the bull, lightsaber training, and talking about girls (easily the single most important portion of their excursions, as any thirteen year-old male can attest), they would often contest with each other to see which could set the best squirrel trap.
Jaq had a tendency to win. Even, as just demonstrated, when the game involved was Cameron DeLong.
"Cam, Cam, Cam," Jaq said tsk-ingly. "Spending the day in E&E while hunting each other was your idea, remember?"
"Yes, and I dutifully regret having thought it up."
"Ah, you're just sore 'cause you lost. But hey, could you show me your trap later? I want to see what you did."
"Sure," Cameron said, entirely cognizant of the fact that he was still dangling upside down. "I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet. It's only a few meters that way."
He gestured in vague westerly direction.
"Well, see," Jaq said, somewhat abashed. "I haven't really moved from this spot..."
"What?"
"All I did was set this trap and spike the trail," he explained. "After that... well, if your prey is a predator..."
"...then he'll act like one. Cute. You've been paying too much attention to my uncle, I think."
"Actually that bit came from my mother. Who got it from the same place your uncle did, I believe."
"Wonderful. Could you cut me down now?"
"Uh, sure," Jaq said, drawing his lightsaber. "Sorry about that."
"You're not sorry. You're far to happy about having won by base treachery."
"Well," Jaq replied with a cheerful grin, as he cut the rope and watched Cameron fall to the ground, "it's like that other saying, the one your uncle keeps harping on..."
---
'If you aren't cheating,' Eric Corwin mused balefully, as he stared at his sabaac cards and woefully small pile of chips, 'then you're doing something wrong. So I guess I'm doing something wrong.'
It wasn't that he was a bad cheater; in fact, he'd developed a rather devious streak, in the tactical and strategic sense. The problem was that there was always a better cheater. In this case, the better cheater, to judge by the chip piles, was Everett Kincaid.
And still the Old Sourpuss (as Eric thought of him) didn't crack a smile. Didn't react or say much at all, except the barest amount necessary. The closest he'd come to not looking dour and cross was the faint look of approval that crossed his face when Aral Contassia put on the canned bagpipes as background music.
Apparently the Little Rabbit (as Eric thought of her) was attempting to learn the 'pipes.
Bagpipes themselves weren't a native invention to Golgan III. Rather, one of their engineers had heard a demonstration of the... instrument... at an off-world convention, had strangely decided that their horrid caterwauling was the coolest thing he'd ever heard, and wound up bringing the 'pipes back to Golgan III with him. Long story short, the bloody things had caught on like a 70 efficiency increase in shield generators.
Everett Kincaid, Aral Contassia, and, horror of horrors, Tara d'Avignon (Eric's nickname for her will forever remain confidential), had each developed a bit of a taste for the strange instrument. Eric never did, and so far as he was concerned, never would. It sounded far too much like someone taking a cat and sticking in an ancient food processor, while simultaneously-
The muttered, but inventive, invective from Tara cut off his musings, and he forced himself not to grin in amusement, settling for tiny and well-hidden smile instead. He wasn't sure if she was irritated more by her current hand or by the apparent inapplicability of her cheat cards. He suspected a combination of both.
But such was the way of things at their weekly sabaac game, where the only rule was "don't get caught."
They considered good practice, given the General's "warfare is deception" philosophy. Not that he de-valued honesty, honor, fair-play, and chivalry; in fact, he expected all his officers to demonstrate those virtues in their dealings with their men, and in their own affairs.
But as for combat... he wanted them to cheat. He expected them to dig up every single effective little dirty trick, advantage of terrain, advantage of numbers, distraction, and miss-direction possible. For, he would often say, a battle is won before it begins, by the commander who can harness the most strategic factors.
Hence the Q-ships, modified bulk freighters that carried turbolasers, ion cannons, and warhead tubes rather than cargo.
Hence the alliance with Carlotta and the Courtesan's Guild.
Hence the RKVs.
Hence a sabaac game where everyone cheats.
Eric shook his head and glanced at his cards again. He might in third place, after Everett and Tara, but at least he was doing better than poor Aral, whose chip pile was barely a quarter the size of his own. She was losing about as badly as the rest of them did whenever the General joined in on the game. Carlos DeLong was downright evil when it came to cheating at cards, or any sort of game for that matter, and he would routinely clean them out-
-about as badly as Aral proceeded to do over the next five hands.
Eric stared at her in shock as gaily hummed along to the 'pipes and gathered up her chips. Everett looked at her, raised an eyebrow, and then a fleeting ghost of a smile crossed his lips.
Eric very nearly fell over at that, at it was one of maybe two times he'd seen Old Sourpuss smile, ever, but it such a fleeting thing that he wondered if he'd imagined it.
Tara, for her part, simply blurted out "How in the hell did you do that?"
"You know, just bided my time," Aral replied as she scooped up the last of the chips. "Then Eric made that bluff a few hands ago, and I saw the chance to spring my trap!"
"Just like frelling that, huh?"
"What is it that the CO says?" Everett rumbled, in only his third polysyllabic pronouncement of the night.
---
'There's no art quite so exquisite,' Carlos thought happily as he sipped his drink, 'as a successful trap.'
He'd expected a bit more difficulty on his present mission, given who he was after. Money talks, and can purchase away even justice, something that he wouldn't put past this particular shipping magnate. He hadn't expected the local authorities to cooperate, at least not once said magnate got wind of it and started throwing around credits, so he'd made plans of his own even as he consulted with the local constabulary.
He needn't have bothered. The constable turned out to be a right honorable sort; even though he shared Carlos' good-natured aversion to fair play in all things tactical, he comported himself well and evenly in all his dealings, with ne'er a bribe crossing his hands. He was justifiably horrified by the information that Carlos brought him, and once he'd moved past the initial disbelief, he announced it no uncertain terms that it was time "to deleted nail that expurgated bastard."
Seeing the name of a local businessman mentioned in the ledger of a confirmed slaver, along side the words "quantity purchased" and "catamite", will tend to provoke that reaction in a man. A decent one, at least.
And so Carlos found himself in a fancy restaurant, eating fancy food and drinking fancy local-equivalent-to-lemonade, and watching as an undercover cop moved up to the shipping magnate.
Watched as the cop engaged the magnate in conversation.
Watched as the conversation turned to personnel costs for galaxy-wide shipping lines.
Watched as the shipping magnate explained, in hushed tones and innuendo, his "cost-cutting measures", and some of the side-benefits thereof, wink wink, nudge nudge.
Watched as the undercover cop stood up, flashed his badge, read the magnate his rights and charges (very loudly, in fact), and then hauled the critter out of the restaurant.
A trap well laid.
"Here's to you, Uncle Jaq," Carlos whispered, raising his glass high as the babble of background conversation started up again. "You trained us well."