Chapter 9: Past and Premonitions
The others were asleep by the time Vondo was ready to leave, so he said his goodbyes in holo form and tried to forget about what he'd seen that day. The kid he'd picked up on Ord Mantell and the baby girl he'd brought into the world had killed a handful of mercenaries in a hangar bay not a hundred clicks from his home; the apartment he and Shannin had bought when they had thought they'd be done with shooting and killing and subterfuge. He thought of Junaida's expression as the detonator had exploded, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. He couldn't even name it. And he also couldn't put his finger on how he felt about this all. It wasn't like he hadn't set his own fair share of detonators.
And then there was Skavak, and Vondo knew more about Juni's business with the scoundrel than he let on. He may be a cheat at cards, but subterfuge, and elaborate deceptions had always been beyond him. He always thought Junaida was just like him, but he had seen bits and pieces of her mother, Shannin, in her today, and he wasn't sure what Junaida would say if he told her so.
The comm chirped as Vondo brought his ship out of orbit and began to program the jump to hyperspace. His co-pilot, a dark-furred wookiee named Bowdaar, was asleep in his berth. His post-retirement ship wasn't so complicated that it required a co-pilot, but of course Bowdaar was more than just a co-pilot. A long time ago, Bowdaar and Vondo had made a promise to help each other not get killed in much the same way as Junaida and Corso had.
Vondo brought up the message on the display, hoping for a minute that it was word from his wife. It had been over twenty four hours since she'd checked in. After their mutual retirement they had made a pact, that if either of them was on the road for an extended period of time they'd send the other an all-clear signal every twenty four hours. Of course, before that he'd been forced to go months without hearing from her. One time it had been a full year. They had both lived in the shadows then, but her shadows always seemed deeper. That was the Empire's doing, the legacy of which they had yet to be completely rid of.
The message wasn't from his wife, but rather his youngest daughter Alsina, a student at the Jedi academy on Tython. She didn't normally contact him. Vondo wasn't sure if she was even allowed to contact them. Jedi weren't even supposed to remember their parents, let alone visit them once a year, or holo them once every couple of weeks. Actually, it was usually Vondo and Shannin that had to initiate contact with Alsina, sending her monthly status updates via holo, and receiving them in return.
Vondo's concern deepened when he saw that the transmission was live. These were rarer than corusca gems. He accepted it, and Alsina's image swam into place on the console projector.
"Hi dad," she called softly, her voice distorted by millions of parsecs of distance and more than a few malfunctioning buoys along the way. There was no image, just voice. Vondo closed his eyes and pictured Alsina's face. What did she look like now? She was fourteen now, but she'd been born with a serious look in her gray eyes. She had brown hair like her mother, but had she cut it? Was she wearing it braided? Had it grown? Had it grown even darker? She'd been blond when she was a baby, like her mother had been. Shannin used to braid it in Alderaanian fashions. She'd spend hours on Alsina's hair. Junaida had never been able to sit still like that. All Vondo could picture was Shannin's face, and his stomach lurched when he realized that he was forgetting what Alsina looked like.
"What's the special occasion?" Vondo asked, halting the hyperspace countdown temporarily and swallowing the emotion rising in his throat. First Juni and now Alsi.
"It's not so much special as it is urgent," Alsina's voice replied.
"Oh?" Vondo remarked. "What's happened?"
"It's not so much happened as going to happen. Maybe," she qualified. She was silent for a moment, and Vondo heard her take a deep breath. Was she in her quarters, or was one of her Masters watching over her shoulder? "I've been having trouble sleeping. I see things, not things really, but feelings. My teachers told me to trust these feelings, so I am, and I think you're in danger." Alsina almost sounded cheerful, proud of her discovery and her abilities.
"Danger?" Vondo repeated. She wasn't cynical like Junaida, or at all jaded, but then again she'd been raised by both her parents together since birth for as long as they could before letting the Jedi take her. To Alsina the world was full of endless possibilities and unmarred goodness. At least until now.
"What do you mean?" Vondo repeated.
Her silence weighed on him, but then she said "I can't really explain it. Are you at home?"
"No," Vondo admitted. "I'm heading out for business."
"That's not good," Alsina said sternly, the cheer draining from her voice. Was she afraid? Jedi weren't supposed to feel fear, but she was just a little girl. It was supposed to be a father's job to stop her from feeling afraid.
"Well, I've got to," Vondo explained. "Just a little road trip," he said dismissively. When did his youngest child get so serious?
"I know you do," Alsina ceded with a heavy sigh. "I know nothing I can say will change that just...be careful, all right? I've got this terrible feeling what wherever you're heading, you're heading into trouble. Is mom with you?"
"No, she had her own business to attend to."
"Oh," Alsina said, sounding crestfallen.
"I'll be careful," Vondo promised with a tired smile.
Alsina nodded. "I've got to go," she said suddenly. "Just remember to be very careful. I'll holo home soon, I promise. Will you send me a holo, too? And be careful!"
"I will," Vondo promised with a laugh that he hoped wouldn't make her think he wasn't taking this seriously, because he was.
"I love you!" Alsina called before switching off her transmitter. Vondo then powered the comm and checked the signal coordinates. Tython. He wasn't sure why. Maybe he'd rather believe that the message was a dupe than think that his daughter had actually foreseen his doom. He didn't want doom. He wanted to do a little work and make a little extra cash and slip back into his comfortable retirement on Coruscant. Maybe he'd even persuade the wife to take a little vacation. It didn't take a Jedi to know they could both use it. Retirement, it seemed, was a lot more stressful than either of them could have predicted.
For the moment, Vondo decided not to over-think Alsina's warning. He wasn't going to turn the ship around, nor did he think that would help. Instead, he resolved to keep his blaster on him at all times once he arrived on Nar Shaddaa. Of course, no one in their right mind would walk onto Nar Shaddaa unarmed.
Vondo met Shannin on Nar Shaddaa during the cold war when he was at his worst and she, for the first time, had found room for her best in what she did. He was half a million credits in debt to Drooga the Hutt for a job that had ended badly, and since the Republic had yet to offer him a job let alone amnesty, he had several warrants for his arrest floating around the galaxy. This made Nar Shaddaa the best and the worst place for him to be. The Republic wouldn't find him here, but Drooga would. Working as a lone wolf at that time meant that he had fewer ways to split the profits, but also no one to help him when he needed it. He hid out in Bleeder territory, working odd jobs as he tried to save up enough credits to fuel his ship in order to do a real job in hopes of earning back the credits he owed Drooga. That is, if Drooga wasn't going to charge him interest. Vondo was almost certain that Drooga would, just because the putrid old Hutt could.
Most half-wits knew to stay out of Bleeder territory, but there were always a few, Vondo included, that thought they could handle it, or that their enemies wouldn't be crazy to follow them in. Vondo could protect himself, or at least he'd been able to so far. Other folks were not so well armed.
One was an Evocii, sliced open, dissected, and then left to die one kidney short. Two women stood over the dying alien, one of them a Rattataki in heavy armor looked bored, while the second tried desperately to perform first aid. She had a veil on, the kind assassins often wore attached to their helmets to hide their faces when they killed their victims. But she wasn't executing anyone right now. For some reason, this assassin was trying to save the life of an idiot Evocii that had wandered into the wrong part of town.
Vondo hesitated. He hesitated for a long, long moment, and then his conscience kicked him and he ran forward, out of the shadows he'd been calling home, and pulled out the med-kit attached to his belt. He was trained in combat medicine, a relic from a past he'd like to forget. He hadn't used these skills in a long time besides patching up the occasional blaster-burn or sprain on himself. He'd never administered to anything this bad. Not since Belsavis.
There was blood everywhere, blackening the Evocii's clothes as he screamed for help. Vondo shouldered the woman out of the way, dosing the alien with a painkiller that immediately caused him to relax. The woman's hands were shaking and bloody.
"I—" she began, "I couldn't find the artery. I don't know where the artery…on an Evocii."
The Rattataki chimed in with a mocking drawl, "We killed dozens of these on Hutta. Why so sentimental now?"
Vondo saw a flash of something pass across the woman's eyes, but then his attention returned to the work at hand. He found the artery, pinched it, tied it, closed the wound, and stapled it shut. He flooded the area with kolto then tore a strip of gauze from his kit. "Help me with this," he ordered.
The woman jumped to obey. They bound the Evocii's midriff with the gauze, which turned red instantly, but not with fresh blood. They'd halted the damage, and now the alien would need a real doctor.
"Do you have a speeder?" he asked.
"No, but I can get one," her accent was Imperial, her tone frightened. Vondo felt a pang of something. Fear? Regret? The woman motioned to the Rattataki, who drew her blaster and jogged in the direction of the nearest Bleeder hidey-hole. There would be speeders there. But could the Rattataki manage alone?
"She's capable," the woman told him, but now her accent had changed. The cool gray eyes peering back at him from above the veil were no longer filled with panic and fear. Instead, they were just...empty. "Thank you," she said.
"What's this Evocii to you?" Vondo asked indelicately, checking the alien's vitals with a palm-sized scanner. Stable.
"A life," the woman replied evasively. "Isn't that enough?"
"For an assassin? No," Vondo retorted.
"Who says I'm an assassin?"
"Everything about you," he told her, giving her a brisk nod. "Your clothes, the way you move, your total inability to perform first aid."
"Oh yeah? And you're a doctor, then?" she snapped. "The gun in your holster is just for looks."
Vondo smiled. "This is Nar Shaddaa, honey. Teachers carry firearms."
"I still bet you put more holes in people than you patch up," she insisted. Her veil fluttered with the force of her words. So what if she was right. The sound of an engine filled the narrow corridor. The Rattataki returned riding a speeder with just enough of a cargo platform at the back to strap on the wounded Evocii.
"Boss," she called. "I've got friends on the way. We might wanna make this quick."
Vondo helped the woman strap the Evocii onto the speeder, taking care not to rupture the fresh plasma-staples. There wasn't enough room for four. Vondo watched the woman mount up behind the Rattataki.
"Hey!" he called, heart suddenly hammering. "You owe me!"
She threw a small square coin at him. Vondo realized it was token for a drink at one of Nar Shaddaa's many cantinas. "Eight o'-clock," she shouted. "If you survive those guys."
A handful of angry Bleeders sprinted up the corridor, weapons drawn. Vondo sighed and gave the woman a nod, stilled his nerves, and drew his blaster.
"I've got a job for you, Vondo Ra'lon," the woman said later at the White Nexu bar under the flickering light of a holo-dancer. "Consider it my payment for helping me earlier."
"A job?" Vondo asked. His left elbow burned where he'd taken a hit from the mob this woman had led straight to him. He had a kolto patch on it but no painkillers, but he wasn't about to admit that right now. "What kind of job."
"A smuggling job," she told him. "I know who you are, what you do, and that normally, you're pretty decent at it."
"If you know so much, you'll know I'm as broke as they come right now," he explained. "I can't even fuel my ship."
"I'll pay in advance," she told him. She wasn't wearing the veil today. She looked relaxed, spoke in a flawless Republic accent and was dressed like your average spacer. Everything about her was forgettable. The blank expression on her average-looking face, the loose-fitting clothes, the dull brown of her hair. Only the knife at her hip gave away the fact that she was in one of the galaxy's many violent professions. Maybe she really was just a spacer. Maybe the Imperial accent he'd heard before was just his ears playing tricks on him. Maybe the assassin's gear was just a get-up. She had a scar on her chin, an old one that kolto couldn't erase. Or maybe it was a fake. "I owe you something for helping save that Evocii. I mean to pick you over the million other smugglers on this moon to do an easy job."
"How easy?" he asked. "And if it's so easy, why don't you do it yourself?"
"Because I've got better things to do," she said defensively, then added, "And because I can't be connected to this cargo."
Vondo frowned, leaning back into his chair and ordering another drink he assumed she'd pay for. "What is it?"
The woman reached into her pocket and removed a small device about the size of a fingernail, flicked it on, and set it between them. It was a jammer, interrupting any small listening devices that might be near them. No, she was definitely not just some spacer. "The cargo is a child," she told him softly. "A Force sensitive child from Nal Hutta."
Vondo's stomach squirmed. Live cargo? Live sentient cargo?
"You know what happens to Force-sensitives in Empire territory," she told him bluntly. "This child's father asked me to get him off Nal Hutta and out of Imperial space. I got him off Hutta, but my pilot ran into some trouble that has prevented the child's transfer off world. The child is in a hotel room a few blocks from here, scared and alone. I need someone I can trust to get him somewhere where the Sith can't find him."
Vondo was silent for a moment. "And you trust me?"
The woman gave him a muted smile. "As much as I can trust anyone, which is to say not very far, but I trust that you'll do this job. You have a good heart, and you're in need of credits. I can appeal to both of those sensibilities."
"How much?"
"Enough," the woman told him. "How far can you take him?"
"All the way to Coruscant for the right price."
"Done."
"You haven't even asked my price."
"You know I'll pay."
The server arrived with Vondo's drink. He took a long sip, relishing the warmth of the alcohol on his tongue. "You seem to think we know a lot about one another. I don't even know your name."
"Shannin," she replied after a moment's hesitation.
"Is that even your real name?"
"It is," she told him. "It as a foolish thing for me to tell you, but I trust you. I'm not supposed to trust anybody, but for some stupid reason I trust you."
Vondo set his drink down and took a deep breath. He was tired. Mentally and physically. Emotionally drained. Being broke was like being naked. No matter where he went he knew that he had nothing; just a ship with a dry belly parked in a hangar he could no longer fly to because he didn't have the cash for the taxi. When he looked a Shannin, he thought for a moment she understood this feeling. He dismissed the thought. "That was foolish," he told her. "But it just so happens that you can count on me."
She passed him a credit stick. He checked the amount and then pocketed it, his heart racing. It was twice what he had expected the down-payment to be. "You'll receive that much again when the child's uncle collects him on Coruscant. It won't be from me, but the boy's family. It's the payment that was supposed to go to me."
"Awful generous of you," Vondo told her, "Giving up your share like that."
"There is no fate I envy less than that of the Force-sensitives of the galaxy," she said somberly, rolling her small drink glass between her fingers before lifting it to swallow the last sip. "I will do whatever it takes to keep children out of the hands of the Sith—and the Jedi. Money is inconsequential when it comes to that."
Vondo nodded slowly. "For what it's worth I agree. But still," he said, raising his glass to her. "Next time you're on Nar Shaddaa, let me know, and I'll buy you a drink."
Shannin gave him one open, unguarded smile. "It's the least you can do."
When she got up to leave, Vondo called after her sentimentally, "You really can count on me, you know. To get the kid to Coruscant." He added in a lower tone. "It's good to know that not all Imperials are dogs."
Before he could blink a knife was at his throat. He saw her draw it, but it was like he was dreaming; rooted to the spot and unable to do anything about it. He felt its keen edge rasp against his skin. "Don't think for a second that you know anything about me," she hissed into his ear. "There is a difference between an Imperial and a Sith, one you'll be lucky to never have to learn. Remember that, fly-boy." She released the knife. Vondo raised a nervous hand to rub at the spot where it had been. There was a slight sheen of blood where the edge had cut, but his thumb barely came away red. He'd done worse shaving himself in the mornings. "And you still owe me that drink." Shannin gave him a smile, sheathed her knife, and turned her back on him.
He smiled, too.
