Chapter Nine

UPPER CITY, TARIS

"Get ready for me, love,
'cos I'm a commer
I simply gotta march,
My heart's a drummer!
Nobody, no, nobody is gonna
Rain on my parade!"

Belting out the final lyric, Sarna bent over double, her back screaming with pain that was dulled down by the sheer amount of Tarisian ale in her body. Not one to announce such weakness, she decided to drop her microphone, then hurl her legs up into the air and over her body, performing a perfectly drunken part-somersault and landing flat on her gluteus muscles.

Without even batting an eyelid, Sarna returned to her feet and immediately fell once again - this time being caught by the arms of one of the most masculine men she'd ever known. "You ok?" Uthar asked, and Sarna's heart fluttered.

She batted her eyelids, before replying. "Kiss me!"

And she slapped her hands onto both of Uthar's cheeks and forced her lips to mate with his.

Carth and Aaryn watched as Sarna attempted to perform a somersault. Landing on her backside after incomprehensibly screaming the lyrics to an ancient song that no one seemed to have enjoyed. Carth was forced to rush forward as the drunk performer stood and immediately began to fall again. Landing in his arms, Carth said to her, "You ok?"

The Sith officer's eyelids appeared to flutter, before she said something that resembled an incredibly vulgar word, slapped both her hands onto Carth's cheeks and put her lips to his own.

The kiss was so unexpected that Carth simply couldn't pull away from Sarna before feeling her tongue press against his lips, attempting to gain entry to his mouth. Then it got worse.

In the span of seconds, Sarna vomited all over Carth - breaking the kiss - and fell to the floor unconscious. She then vomited again, spewing partly-digested alcohol over the floor of her apartment.

Carth turned to face Aaryn. The junior officer was struggling to stifle a laugh, and Carth had to admit that he was beginning to do the same. The contents of Sarna's stomach dripped from his face, either landing on the floor or on his prized orange flight jacket. "Don't say it."

"I never realised your kissing was so bad."

Carth simply raised an eyebrow by way of response.

UNDERCITY

Leaving the door ajar, Brejik exited the 'fresher and padded, naked, to his bed. He lay down, and brought his hand sweeping across the equally naked body of a fair-skinned young woman. Her body was so tempting to Brejik, so much a reminder of Bastila's own that he almost forgot the subtle differences.

Almost.

"My dear, sweet Ada." He spoke into her ear, his voice softly lilting.

Ada woke, her dark eyes opening and turning to meet his. She wasn't unlovely, certainly not by any sane person's standards, but she was by no means a match for Bastila's beauty.

And Brejik told this to Ada.

Tears pooled in her eyes, finally streaming down her face and neck, and eventually her breasts. To Brejik, it was highly erotic, reminiscent of some of his previous sexual relationships. He and Kandon Ark, for instance, had been friends here on Taris for years before finally giving in to their hormonal urges. Kandon was originally from Sleheyron, a planet in Hutt Space, and they'd first met when Kandon's family had fled their homeworld after the Hutts began to subjugate the population to slavery. Omeesh, a particularly vile Hutt and self-styled governor of Sleheyron, had been viciously stabbed to death by one of his slaves, a Twi'lek girl named Yuthura who'd been enslaved during the Hutt's rise to power.

After their first night together, Kandon had admitted to Brejik that Yuthura was his niece, and that she'd been missing ever since Omeesh's death. Kandon had been so upset (and Brejik so bloody uncomfortable) that he'd left his Twi'lek lover to calm himself down.

That roughly translated to Brejik finding another lover - Ashana, the lead vocalist of the Twisted Rancor Trio.

A sharp pain flared in Brejik's left cheek, jolting him out of his reverie. Ada had slapped him, though the hit was pathetically weak. Brejik simply slapped her face with the back of his hand, tossing her to the floor in a heap.

"Don't you ever slap me again, you kriffing piece of filth!" He grabbed Ada's clothing from the floor, opened the door that led from his room, and flung them out. He then proceeded to seize Ada's hair in his right hand, and dragged her out into the corridor and throwing her down roughly. "You will be put to work in the kitchens! And I shall personally see to it that every man and woman in this swoop gang has access to your bunk." He slammed the door on her.

UPPER CITY

Aaryn opened the draw beside Sarna's bed. He caught a glimpse of light reflected from a large piece of polished plasteel. Beneath it were more pieces, and Aaryn felt his luck increase. Perhaps all that Force-kark the Jedi keep going on about it true. He'd only been able to gain access to the chest of drawers after waiting hours for every other member of the party to either leave or fall unconscious. Even Carth had succumbed to blacking out once or twice.

Heaving the armour back to their apartment - he'd left Carth at Sarna's party to sleep off the alcohol - Aaryn laid it out on the table and systematically placed the pieces of plasteel in the best way he could guess the armour was worn. It didn't help that he'd never worn a full set of armour in his life. After sorting the Sith armour, Aaryn got undressed and slipped into bed, his mind beginning to ache slightly from the drink.

Looking to his right and out through one of the apartment's windows, Aaryn's mind wandered. Taris was in the grips of Malak's Sith Empire, but the Republic hadn't - thus far - seen fit to retake the system, though naturally the Sith were censoring any and all incoming news from the Tarisian population, so it wasn't difficult for Aaryn to imagine Taris was virtually blind to the rest of the galaxy.

Taris had only just begun to recover from the Mandalorian Wars, barring the somewhat dramatic rise of humanocentrism via the Tarisian nobles, and Darth Malak had predominantly halted that progress. The Sith Lord is nothing more than a brute. A coward.

A shadow rushing across the window jarred Aaryn from his thoughts, and he leapt up out of the bed in shock. Taking his blaster from under the pillow, Aaryn squinted his eyes and struggled to detect any presence in the darkness. He activated the lights.

The apartment brightened. Aaryn took a full minute to peer around - nothing. The apartment was as secure as when he'd returned from the party, with no possible source of the shadow.

"You seem well, old friend."

Aaryn jumped out of his skin, spun and fired several times at the precise location of the voice. The coherent bolts of laser energy hit the wall in front of him, passing through the ghostly visage of an old woman. The cowled, greying twin plaits and slightly hunched stance felt familiar to Aaryn, though he knew he'd never met the woman before.

The ghostly woman's face emitted a lopsided grin. "Blasters were never effective against me in the past," she said, her low alto voice seeming to echo throughout the apartment. She paused for a couple of seconds. "You don't recall me."

Her face took on a funny sort of look, that of a disappointed mother expecting more of her child. Aaryn's face, meanwhile, had remained white as a sheet of flimsiplast. "Should I?"

The woman remained silent for a long moment before answering. "Perhaps."

Still pointing his blaster at the woman, Aaryn retreated and sank back onto the ruffled bed. "Who are you?" he asked.

She smiled.

Then she simply disappeared, evaporating into the air like mist, the air around her glowing with a dim white blur for a second before Aaryn was left alone, his thoughts and his heart racing.