Part 28: Speeder Rides of Doom
"Where are you taking us? We've been walking all day." Complained Crest.
"I'm taking you to my little hangar and then I'll fly you to my warehouse." Jysella grinned. "Well, here we… WHOA!"
The ground beneath the girls collapsed and three of Jysella's fingers suddenly softened and stretched to wrap themselves around the trunk of a tree. Sil, who was clinging to a rotting vine, screamed. Crest, who was hanging a few meters beneath the Jedi princess, released her grip.
"Relax, you two. I'm not a freak." When Sil responded with nervous shivers, Jysella explained. "My hand was practically cremated and ya couldn't tell between skin and melted glove, so the shapers gave me some nice implants. I forgot to hide it when we triggered this trap. Sil, would you bring Crest up and grab my ankles?"
"You are scary." Sil's eyes widened. There was honesty in Jysella's voice, but the red rays of the setting sun behind Jysella illuminated all but the Jedi's features and details, giving her the outline of a monster from children's stories and undermining credibility. "Can't you bring her up?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't grab her and I can't find any mutant bats within a kilometer of this place. Now hurry up so I can take us to my speeders."
"Sorry for what?" Sil was angered, but she complied and brought the rapidly descending Crest to the level of the other Jedi's ankles.
"There is no way in the all the stars of the galaxy I'm touching you." Crest shrieked.
"It's alright. I'm still human, just took a few implants to cover up scars. Now grab me so we can get moving!" The oldest woman in the group snapped, aggravating the blonde pilot. However, Crest carefully wrapped her fingers around the Jedi's ankle and Jysella raised the younger woman to the ground level as the finger implants shrank and brought the two up.
"AAAAHHHHH!" Sil screamed as her vine finally snapped, sending her plummeting into the depths of the planet's rotting underworld. Overgrown toenails suddenly broke through Jysella's shoes and dug into the earth beneath her feet, anchoring her, as one of the distended fingers released its grip on the tree and tied itself around Sil's wrist.
"Help me pull her up!" Jysella ordered and Crest, too frightened to disobey, quickly did as she was told.
"I'm definitely indebted to the both of you now." Sil sighed as she shook her right hand to get the blood flowing. "Jysella, we have much to talk about."
"I'm sure. I can tell you my stories once we get into the speeder." The shortest girl in the group grinned as she took the girls up three levels in a dimly lit, rotting building.
"Which is yours?" Sil asked when a light came on and revealed two vehicles in the hangar space. One held a strict resemblance to the simple but fast sand speeders of Tatooine while the other was a glaring, red-orange, cab-like vehicle with a sharp beak designed to penetrate the highest of speeds.
"I cobbled 'em both together. Since there's three of us, we'll take this one." Jysella fondly petted the larger, fiery speeder as the skin on the back of her right hand peeled and spat out the vehicle's access card.
"Correction: you are the freakiest girl I have ever seen." Sil shrank back, bumping into and knocking over the black, one-person speeder.
"Relax, Sil. It's just a skin replacement. Think of it as a fancy glove." Jysella smiled as she turned on the speeder. Slightly disgusted, Sil hopped into the back seat and Crest climbed into the other front seat.
"A skin replacement?" The princess was now perplexed.
"Uh-huh. I met a few others here and freaked them out, so I asked the shapers to make me look as normal as possible since it's hard to disguise some things in the Force."
"So that's how you managed to look like any random person I can find in Fountain Palace?" Sil asked.
"Yup."
"Now I see why the Ni'Korish hate Jedi." Crest muttered.
"Actually, it has little to do with that. Those people don't like the way we probe minds and beat them in politics." Sil explained.
"Whoa, you are still eating that?" I wonder, just how dainty is this little princess? I've seen the Queen Mother eat whatever's served in half the time a normal person takes. Jysella asked when she noticed that Sil was still nibbling at the lunch that the girls picked on their trek.
"Hey, I've heard what you're thinking behind that." Sil then thought at the other Jedi. She's more Dathomiri than she is Hapan and she'll work off twice the amount the average person eats on any given day.
"Perhaps you should let me pilot." Crest offered. She has had enough of the scary implants and bossy attitude. If that Jedi was impatient on foot, who could predict how dangerous her flying could be?
"What, scared of Jedi and implants?" Jysella almost sneered as she backed the speeder out of the hangar.
"Yes, in fact, I am." The younger girl shot back. Her Hapan half wished for the Jedi to be subtler, but her Coruscanti blood liked the directness.
"Coward."
"You're too reckless and impatient."
"Oh for the galaxy's sake it's a speeder! What do you know about patience?"
"It's a virtue that you don't seem to have a lot of."
"Whatever, kid." Jysella said as the speeder gained altitude.
"Kid? Hapans are older than they look."
"After they turn thirty, from what I've heard. Isn't that true, Sil?"
"Well, yes." The stunned, fourteen-year-old bystander barely managed to speak.
"From what I've seen of you, it's safe to say you're going to pilot too fast!" Crest shouted.
"What do you know about piloting?"
"I've been flying since I was fifteen and the way Ben moves our ships around scares me out of my wits!"
"So?"
"Didn't you tell us your X-Wing got blown up?"
"That's true, but I also put together this speeder and know this planet better than most humans alive or dead." Jysella seemed to forget Crest's concerns as her speeder picked up speed.
"Shut up, both of you, or I'll revoke what I said about my debt and keep two more Battle Dragons for the Hapan fleet. Crest, by my authority as princess and queen's first child, I order you to take advantage of Jysella's knowledge of the planet." By the end of her tirade, Sil was both red and exhausted. She had taken more than enough criticism from Jysella and had enough of Crest's loud mouth. In short, the princess could not wait for her solo part in Jysella's plan.
"You're sticking for that crazy Jedi? I should have run to my aunt's house and joined the Ni'Korish when Mother was killed." Crest, who was as flushed as Sil, scoffed.
"I'm not 'sticking for that crazy Jedi', I'm getting myself someone who is not going to get lost in this dump."
"That's it?" Asked Crest.
"That and she's twenty-one, which is older than either of us."
"You're choosing her over me just because she's…"
"This is your last warning. Say one more thing against Jysella and what I said about my debt to you will be revoked. You and I both know that Hapan princesses don't like debts." Sil would have stood up and climbed into the front row had it not been for the thundering winds that pinned her to her seat.
Crest wanted to ask Sil how she managed to know that Jysella was the oldest of the trio, but she was tired of screaming at Jedi. They were too frightening, secretive, bossy, intrusive… She wanted to add 'and rash', but then remembered Ben's somewhat rational behavior and level head. The sixteen-year-old raised her fist to punch the nearest surface, but winds pushed her hand back. Why couldn't she be stuck in a car with Ben or the Yuuzhan Vong guys instead?
Jysella flicked a switch and the speeder's speed suddenly quadrupled to 3000 kilometers per hour.
Hit the brakes! We're falling apart! A pallid Sil screamed at Jysella mentally. Perhaps, despite Jysella's knowledge of the planet and the vehicle, she should have spoken on Crest's behalf. There could not be anything worse than sitting through the hairpin turns that Jysella was making at impossible speeds and hanging on to a speeder seat for dear life, could there?
Then keep us together! The annoyed Jedi Knight shot back as she maneuvered her speeder to catch the air current that would greatly increase her fuel efficiency. She used the combined power of all of her Jedi discipline to hold back her breaking temper. That dainty princess first complained about wearing a rotting dress and posing in an old window to disguise herself from the Yuuzhan Vong patrols, then she screamed and took more time than the Jedi had to eat.
Jysella was not only frustrated with her current cache of passengers, but missed the old friends who used to work with her. If only Doneeta was alive and at her side. When they were partners in most types of work, including machinery, one piloted and the other used the Force to keep people from falling apart at the superhuman speeds without being told to do so.
With a push of a lever, the speeder flattened itself. Jysella sighed. Every little feature of the vehicle reminded her of how skilled of a mechanic that blue-skinned, twi'lek Jedi was. She would trade anything to have her old friend Doneeta in the place of either that loudmouth named Crest or the dainty princess.
"Ya know, Jysella, if the New Republic still lived here, you'd be fined a thousand credits for your flying." Sil used the Force to amplify her voice. The older Jedi let out a growl that the roaring winds drowned out. The only thing she enjoyed about that particular ride was the speed and the lashing wind, and that little brat was implying a complaint about the former.
Jysella wanted to reply, but she could not allow herself to be distracted while flying at inhuman speeds. She had come close to being fined, but after she found herself stranded on Tatooine and placed third in a podrace in return for repairs and a trip off the planet, no authority had the courage to hold her up.
"We're here. Welcome to the shapers' secret warehouse." Jysella said as she brought down both her speed and her speeder. When the other two girls failed to respond, she spun around to see a piece of Yuuzhan Vong armor glue a rather blue Crest to her seat and a swooning Sil enshrouded in a cocoon of waist-length, light brown hair.
Next up: Ben and the Shamed Ones