Simbar Trade Route
In hyperspace, en route from Centares to the Simbar Cluster
Task Force 4
Officer's Galley of the Astral Voyager, Sentinel-class shuttle
The Officer's Galley had several tables, yet was all but deserted. Agent Sluka and Sal were the room's only occupants and sat silently facing each other. No longer in a combat situation, Agent Sluka had donned his black uniform with a blaster pistol on his hip. A satchel sat on the bench beside him. Opposite him, Sal was still wearing the same blue overalls she had been wearing when she participated in the Kuat Drive Yards sabotage but had removed her cap, allowing her long blonde hair to flow down her back. Between them sat two trays, each with a pre-packaged meal serving.
Dinner for two.
"Why'd you do it?" Sal asked. Heat and anger filled her voice. Her blue eyes locked onto his.
"Do what?" Agent Sluka asked. "I've done a lot of things and regretted more than a few of them."
"Don't play games with me," she snapped back.
"To be honest, I'm not really sure why," Agent Sluka answered her. "Or, to be more honest, there are a whole lot of reasons why I did or might have done it but I'm not real sure how they all fit together."
"You just spoke a bunch of words without telling me a damn thing," she snapped back.
"I don't know where to begin," he said. "I think it really started when I killed that pretend Jedi, Altoson."
"He was my Master!" Sal snapped. "He was teaching me to be a Jedi." Anger filled her eyes. "Don't think that I won't pull my lightsaber and cut you down. Right here. Right now."
"He killed my Father!" Agent Sluka snapped back. Sal froze in silence. "That's right. He killed my Father and I killed him. And he was no Jedi. That makes us even."
Sal's eyes darted back and forth and then she took a breath, calming herself. "You still haven't told me why you did it?"
"I'd gotten what I wanted when I killed the Cerean," Agent Sluka answered. "And I started to think about what else I wanted," he added. Sal looked at him waiting for more. "And I decided there were a whole lot of things that I wanted," he added. "Look," he continued. "I saved your life on Tarpau 1 and I saved your life on Kuat. I didn't have to give you that mini thermal and I could have just walked out of Kuat with the gear I was supposed to take to safety but I saved you again. And your Alinde Cats gangers this time."
The look of surprise on Sal's face confirmed his suspicions. "You were so comfortable around the Pit Fighters I thought you might have spent some time with gangs," Sluka added. "When I learned your father was the last King of Adelhoffe and I saw those gangers with you looking so laughable in their technician clothing…I just knew you brought them in with you because you trusted them and they trusted you."
"And why'd you do it?" Sal asked again.
"I don't know," Agent Sluka added. "That's all I got."
Sal looked at him for a moment and then said, "You can call me Varina, if you like."
"And you can call me Malgo," Agent Sluka answered. "But I'm going to stick with Sal for now."
Sal smiled at him for a brief moment, a wide and white smile, and her blue eyes again locked onto his. "Now what?"
"We're going to Svobrum," Agent Sluka said. He reached into his pouch and pulled out his father's Shoto hilt, covered with the animal images of the Five Tribes of Tython and runes in the ancient Tython script. "My Dad's lightsaber," he said. Sal just stared at it. Next, he pulled a slew of images from his pouch and laid them out. The recorded images appeared to be images of a journal. Countless runes were scribbled across the pages. Agent Sluka pointed at it and said, "Images of my Father's journal taken before I handed it over to the Inquisitor. It's written in the ancient Tython script." Finally, Agent Sluka pulled a leather journal from the pouch and set it down on the table. "And this was a gift I received from a historian on Adelhoffe who didn't even give me his name. A gift to help translate it."
She simply stared at the objects lain out before her then looked up at Agent Sluka.
"Let's find the Morkai Anomaly and walk upon its surface," he said. "You and me."
Thus ends Episode 5 of The Adventures of Agent Malgo Sluka, ISB
