Disclaimer: Don't own it. Just play with it. :-D
Chapter Sixteen
Shada D'ukal sat on the edge of the ratty mattress
and lowered her face into her hands. One week. Just one week. One week and her
life had been entirely, inescapably, turned upside down. A week ago she had
been a bodyguard in the employment of the smuggler Mazzic.
Then the Mistryl had contracted his death. Shada took a grim pleasure in the
fact that the Mistryl had considered her a large enough threat to warrant
sending seven of their number. She growled with satisfaction, her face slowly
rising from her hands as she remembered how she had managed to disable four of
the seven before they subdued her. And even then, they cheated by using a stun
blast. Mazzic… Shada berated herself
yet again as she thought of her now-dead employer.
The small, malnourished human child that Shada had found huddled in a black
alleyway behind a filth-ridden cantina where the cleanest thing was the smoky
air groaned low in her sleep. Her grimy face was growing slick with sweat that
reduced the dust and smudges to a sludge-like substance. "No..." Her
innocent, pain-filled voice cracked as though her vocal cords were broken and
incapable of carrying any sounds. "No, master..." The fear and
apprehension on her face twisted Shada's heart into a
knot that she wasn't sure that would ever be able to become unwound.
"Shh, Little One..." Shada said softly,
scooting over to sit by the girl. "It's all right... It's all
right..." Shada laid one hand on the girl's forehead and yanked it right
back as she encountered the dry, crackling heat that one would expect from a
clay abode on Tatooine during the noon hour - not from a
child's forehead.
"NOO!!!" A pair of startlingly dark blue eyes
flew open as the child jerked up from her reclining position and flinched
instinctively away from Shada. Shada's eyes darkened
as she took in the yellow, green, purple, red, and black bruises that showed up
with painful clarity against the almost translucent white skin of the young
girl's body.
"Ma-mas-s-ster?" She
whimpered almost pathetically, pressing her back against the wall, her bony
knees drawn up to her chest. Her eyes, now out of the shadows, paled to an odd
teal color as they raced to the door, to Shada's
face, back to the door, to Shada… It's almost like she expects to be-
"You're free, kid." Shada said quietly, stopping her thoughts before they went
down that path.
"Ma-master?" The girl raised one hand to shove a lank
strand of filthy brown hair out of her wide eyes. Suddenly the feel of the
rough fibers of the blanket attracted her attention – her eyes widened to
enormous proportions and she fairly threw the blanket away from her. "I-I'm
so-s-so sor-r-ry Madam… I didn't filch the blankie… I didn't… Please don't hit me…" she held her left
arm across her chest, bowed her face into her knees and attempted to shield her
head with her right arm.
Shada's heart twisted up again, How dare they do
this to her? She acts like I'll beat her! For sleeping with a blanket! Her
anger was being brought up to a boiling point. "Who hurt you?" Her voice was
dangerously soft and emotionless, her green eyes blazing with a power that took
the girl's breath away when she glanced up. "Who."
Shada began unconsciously fingering one of her many Zana
M6W-9 molecular stiletto blades; the small human saw
it. She jerked back in fright from Shada. It only took the Mistryl a moment to
understand what had so affected the girl, and a pang of sorrow sliced her to
the marrow. Damn the Sithspawn who did this to her! Shada thought
furiously.
"No-n-n-no one Madam…" Her body was racked with chills and Shada cursed the
people who had done this to her yet again.
Silence reigned in the room; the passage of time was marked only by the
never-ending drip from a faulty sonic shower head in the refresher and the
occasional ragged breath from the smaller of the two females.
"What's your name, Madam?" The girl finally asked hesitantly, her curiosity
overcoming all of her training.
"Shada D'ukal. What are you called?"
"The new ones called me Sqerrum, but-"
"SQERRUM!!" An angry roar echoed through the room as
the door was flung open and a furious Abyssin stormed
into the former sanctuary, followed by a nervous Bith.
"You'll get the bacta-treatment for this." His voice
dropped several decibels and the small girl shook violently.
"Yes sir, Master…" Her lower lip trembled as tears welled up in her suddenly
dark green eyes.
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Shada stared at the credchip in her hand, then tried to drag her attention to the Abyssin
who was talking to her. "…for finding It. It's new and
has yet to learn It's place."
"It was no trouble at all…" Shada murmured, her mind
racing for a way to get the girl away from this beast. "It did seem a little
bright to be a slave though."
The Bith spoke up, "We only found it about a standard
month ago – before that, It really had a cushy life.
But we've almost cured It of that."
Shada's hunter instinct kicked in, "Oh?" Her tone and
inflection were all innocence. The Bith fell for it,
hook, line, and sinker, Shada realized as she covered her smirk with her hand.
"We 'found' It in a shack on the far side of
the town," The creature explained, rubbing his arm where a patch of skin didn't
look quite like the rest.
"How many beings did you kill?" Shada hazarded a guess.
"In the upwards of twenty-five. It was one wild karrde, let me tell you," the Bith
said sneakily, winking at Shada.
"She's Karrde's kid?" Shada could feel her eyebrows
climbing even as she cursed them.
"What's it to you if It is?" The Abyssin
snarled as he slammed a thick hand into the back of the Bith's
head. "This'n talks too much," he growled.
"I know," Shada purred.
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Booster fairly bounced down the boarding ramp. "C'mon Mirax!"
he demanded, grinning from ear to ear. "There's this whole new world just waiting
for me to swindle them out of their money!"
Mirax groaned good-naturedly as she strode easily
after her father. "Why did I ever let you have chocolate? Why oh why oh
why did I??"
"Cause I already had it half made once you caught me," he quipped.
Mirax shot him an amused glare – then gave up trying
to look mad and laughed. Booster felt a warm glow at the sight of his daughter
laughing. "Force, you look so much like your mother, Mirax.
So much." His eyes misted over nostalgically.
Her lopsided grin was so bittersweet it didn't even look like a grin. "Thanks,
Dad."
"Welcome, Angel." Booster pressed a kiss to his little girl's forehead. "Now! Lets go rob somebody blind!"
"Oh yes – let's!" Mirax said helplessly, throwing her
hands up in the air as her father scampered off in search of a victim.
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"You want WHAT???" The Pirate Queen yelled, her aquamarine eyes shooting
sparks hot enough to burn Kashyyyk to the ground in
no time.
[Freedom,] One of her men said gruffly.
"Yeah! And, and, and lots an
lots of credits!" A short, hyper human with an attention deficit disorder and
the unusual condition in which the color grey will induce extreme hyperness on the aforementioned person joined in. It's a
pity really, I mean, nearly everything underground is grey...
"You're mad," she said with soft, cold, certainty.
"And what if we are? Huh? What then?? Being underground can do that to a guy!
Yes it can! But I don't think you'd have ever thought of it! Or did ya, huh? Huh? Did ya??" the
excitable one squeaked.
The thirteen-year-old crimelord rolled her eyes as
seven of her Noghri caretakers/bodyguards… um… "disposed" of the two very much former employees.
Then without a backward glance, she gave the order to release the boy she
called "Dreamer" and his ward.
A faint glow started in her heart. He'll be free…
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Mara laid in her bed for several long minutes without moving, carefully trying
to control her raging, burned mind. A mental touch
through a bond had her sighing with relief as the fires were suddenly quelled.
Her body now lay still simply to soak up the sensation of freedom from, well,
everything. The play of the shadows on the high ceiling held her captivated and
slowly lulled her to an almost sleep state.
Something triggered her reflexes as she suddenly threw off her blankets with
one kick and rolled into a crouch. Carefully scooting backwards until her spine
gently banged into the wall, she called a small handheld blaster to herself.
The door to her bed chamber cracked open, spilling a slender strand of pale
light down. A slight shadow grew across her floor, obliterating the light. The
form took on a small shape, and then the door closed abruptly. The form lost
shape and melted into the shadowy darkness of the large room.
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Jaina slept, her young mind drugged so badly that even the overwhelming panic
that slammed through her bond with the green-eyed boy didn't faze her.
A mental picture was sent to her through the now raw bond – a beautiful woman
with red-gold hair and gleaming green eyes pointing a blaster at the little
boy, now cowering in a corner. Her voice was emotionless as she said, "For the
Empire…"
Jaina Nyx pulled her nursemaids from their slumber as
well as everyone within a two hundred meter radius as her screams of
unadulterated panic filled the cold, recycled air of Coruscant.