3 BTC
It was quite a steep climb for Meep, but he didn't seemed fussed about it as he pushed a crate over to the wall and used it to begin pulling himself up into the hole. Scrambling feet aside, he did it with surprising agility for his age and stature. He liked to think he was still quite spry on account of his thrilling lifestyle.
Slipping into the air duct he reached down with a stubby leg to kick the cage back from the wall and then pulled the grate shut. Turning his beady black eyes back towards the boy, he began to crawl after him. Despite what he'd said, he was still very much waiting for him. Good kid, Meep decided. He wasn't one to let something so little as attempted murder colour his opinion about someone. Much less someone so young.
He was inclined to like children, even decidedly dangerous ones. Perhaps even especially the dangerous ones.
"What's your name, my boy? Is your master crawling around this station somewhere?" He asked leadingly, trying to prompt the boy into talking, though in truth he expected some resistance. It mattered not, he could hold a one sided conversation with the best of them. With any luck the explosion he'd triggered would keep the Trandoshan crew busy for a little while, but even still, it was a relief to be putting some distance between them and the room where they'd last been spotted.
"So where are we going my boy? What's the plan?" he asked, trying to piece together what had led the young Sith apprentice to be skulking about in the air ducts.
"You talk too much," Essian complained, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he glowered over his shoulder at the little man.
He would answer, finally, but it was in a disgruntled, reluctant tone. "It's Essian, and I'm only telling you so you stop calling me your boy. I'm not your boy. I could kill you with a finger if I wanted to," here, he held up his hand to emphasize his point. "You're only still around because doing so would take too long, as you so charitably pointed out. Also, you'll make good bait if those thugs catch up."
He turned back around, scowling into the darkness as he crawled forward on hands and knees. The duct here was cramped, and it put him in a worse mood than he was already.
"And no," he ground out. "My master isn't crawling around anywhere."
Sith Lords don't crawl, though I may have to amend that for the useless ones like her.
"I have no idea where she is. She dropped me off on the promenade and wandered off. Who knows. She may have forgotten I'm here and left the station entirely. She's scatterbrained like that."
His tone oozed sarcastic venom. He was feeling particularly vicious at the thought of his master. The man's question had made him bristle in anger, and the boy did little to tamp the emotion down.
"What about you? Who are you? And what were you doing in the cargo hold anyway? You know that dirty lizard was about to kill you, yeah?"
Come to think of it...what had the man been doing there? Something illegal, no doubt. The boy could easily surmise that much.
"What was I doing?" Meep asked, with amusement ringing in his voice as they shuffled as quietly as possible through the air vent, leading god-knows where. Meep assumed that the boy either knew where he was going or that they would come to a dead end eventually. He was weighing his options as far as a response went. He knew better than to think a child harmless, especially one that was armed to the teeth with force powers and energy weapons. He needed to handle it delicately to say the least...but openness did go a long way towards building trust. Right now, it probably served him best to defuse the kid.
It took him barely a beat to make his decision about how to handle it. "I was doing crime Essian; my life's in your hands then." He offered the kid a respectful bow of his head, if not with a something of a sense of humor about it. If it made the kid feel safer to have the upper hand, then Meep was more than happy to let him have it.
"My name is Meep. It's a pleasure to meet you, Essian," he said, seemingly unfussed by how tightly the young boy was wound.
Essian scowled back at him, but didn't return the greeting.
"Ah yes..." Meep said with a gruff laugh. "I tend to have that effect on people, and yet, I'm still here. I figure I'll keep pissing people off until someone stops me. Not you of course, Essian. I hope, at least. I'm far more interested in what you're doing."
"I may kill you yet," the boy muttered under his breath, too quietly for the man to hear.
"So... what are you doing?" Meep prodded. "Playing in air ducts while your Master's out and about? Or are you sneaking about for a reason?" he asked good naturedly. "It's an interesting operation they have going on back there, eh?"
"None of your business," the boy sneered. He was grateful he'd decided to lead the way. His face felt flushed, and he didn't want to risk this Meep person seeing his embarrassment.
There was a long moment of silence as they shuffled through the air duct, the boy probably thinking how best to respond to his second comment. That was just as well, as it gave Meep some time to do some pondering of his own. How best to make sure the boy didn't get mixed up in this little predicament while also achieving his goal of wiping out the supply of a rather fierce competitor in the sector... that was going to be an interesting balance to keep, and one not entirely foreseen, given he hadn't accounted for this in any of his carefully laid plans. Meep always did his best work off script though. He wasn't going to be tripped up by this little derailment.
While the man pondered his next move, the boy considered how to save face. No way was he going to admit the truth, that he was only in here because he'd bitten off more than he could chew. Sith didn't run and hide.
I'm not hiding. I'm...strategically retreating.
Force...He hoped his master didn't figure out what had happened. Not that he cared about the opinion a weakling, but...
A soft squeaking from up ahead drew him from his thoughts. He quite suddenly remembered his other goal for crawling through the station's rusted out guts.
Capitalizing on the distraction provided by the alien's second comment, he replied, "Yeah. Interesting. You know something about that?" He lowered his voice a notch, trying to inflict the subtle aura of menace he'd heard from some of his instructors on Korriban.
"Hmm... not so much." Meep said vaguely, if only because one didn't get to where he was in life by divulging trade secrets to just anyone, most especially young children who could well regurgitate whatever he said to the Empire. He was quite content working with them through certain intermediaries, but he made a point to choose his allies carefully. The boy's attempt to intimidate him was certainly not lost on him. A disquieting discomfort settled over him. Meep had nerves of steel, though, and he wouldn't be shaken. Not outwardly at least. He'd long since learned he couldn't quite trust his own mind when it came to users of the Force. His voice remained even and steady, "Some kind of smuggling operation, I expect. I was hoping to...determine the scale of the problem. Unfortunately these folks seem to be ungracious hosts."
"What was your first clue?" the boy rolled his eyes. "Are you stupid? Or do you think you're being clever, speaking like that? I'm young, but I'm a Sith, you know."
He really wished people would take that title more seriously. Youthful or not, he wasn't weak.
"Everyone on this station is nothing but a two credit thug," he continued with disdain. "If you want answers," he raised a finger, pointing forward. Dark, gleaming eyes peered back at them with an unnerving intelligence, as though waiting for the pair to hurry up. "I suggest we follow the other kind of rat."
23 BTC
The street above was nearly unrecognizable. Rubble from a half destroyed building spilled out into the road, revealing sparking wires that had already started a fire in the structure's cavernous insides. Baara held a sleeve over her mouth and nose, coughing instinctively at the acrid smell of smoke and dust clogging the air. Broken glass littered the sidewalk, and she quickly gave up trying to step around it, tuning out the sharp crunching noise as she trailed after Zenda.
"Did you have a real plan besides 'find help'?" she hissed at one point. A sudden flash of movement in a doorway had caused her heartrate to spike, but Zenda's non reaction and the frightened visage of a child peering out of the darkness had significantly lowered her blood pressure. She'd half begun to stop and take a closer look when a cold look of impatience from her companion had spurred her onward.
"Finding a working comm would be a start," Zenda muttered, not bothering to turn from her survey of the street. They'd taken shelter in an alley when a group of rebels had pushed their way up the street. Baara could still feel the thud of heavy boots striding over bodies. An old man had been caught out in the road, hurrying home, no doubt, when the soldiers had appeared. They'd gunned him down and kept marching.
Baara tried not to look at him now, crumpled lifelessly on the cracked pavement. Instead, she stared a hole into Zenda's back, willing all of her frustrations and sorrows into the gaze.
"We could check the victims..." she hesitantly began, but she trailed off when Zenda turned fully around to look at her.
"The man's dead. He's been dead for the last fifteen minutes. There's nothing you can do."
Her words, blunt as they were, weren't said cruelly.
Baara still lashed out, "I didn't mean him! But did it occur to you that one of them just might have been carrying one?"
"Did it occur to you that the soldiers might have left a surprise for anyone trying to look?" Zenda replied flatly.
Baara frowned at her. "What are you talking about?"
"It's not difficult to wire an explosive into a comm, Baara."
"They wouldn't do that," Baara answered automatically. Though, in fact, she had no way of knowing whether that was true or not. They might do something like that.
"The Empire did," Zenda replied in an offhand sort of way, returning her attention to the street. "'Not much of a stretch to think they picked up the tactic."
This Baara knew was untrue.
"Who told you that?" she scoffed.
"No one had to," Zenda answered blandly. "Seen it more than once."
"You certainly don't dress like a soldier."
Zenda regarded her disdainfully. "I lost a couple of neighbors that way when I was a kid."
Baara stared at her back in horror. "How...old were they?" she finally managed, after a long, drawn out moment of silence.
"I like you, Baara Amittai. You're predictable," Zenda's eyes widened slightly in surprise, the frown slipping to be replaced by a small smile. It disturbed Baara to realize it was the first genuine one she'd seen on the woman. "One was eight, same as me when I first saw it happen. Ten and five for the other two, a brother and sister."
"That's abhorrent."
"Children are abhorrent. And stupid. They probably wouldn't have lived long anyway. You have to be kind of desperate to pick rations off a corpse."
"I thought you said you were Imperial," Baara changed the subject, both curious and desperate to get the image of the unknown dead children out of her mind.
"I am," Zenda answered coolly.
And just as quickly as it had appeared, the smile was gone, replaced by a mask of neutrality.
The heavy silence dragged on for about twenty seconds as Baara debated whether (and how) to further express her confusion.
"You're from one of the colony worlds," Baara breathed. "Or your parents were stationed there at least..."
"I'd love to swap childhood stories," Zenda cut her off abruptly, "but now's a bad place to do it. I'm going to count to three, and then I need you to run. Keep your head down, and try not to move in a straight line if possible."
"What are you talking about?"
"One."
"Look, I'm sorry if I pried..." Baara felt a chill run down the back of her neck. She couldn't see anyone alive in the dusty street. The flutter of tattered banners beating against the broken stone of bombed out shops and houses seemed suddenly deafening.
"Two."
"What are we running fr..."
"Three."
Without warning, Baara felt herself flung out into the street. The stench of blood and ozone filled her nostrils. She landed on her hands and knees, instinctively rolling as a 'crack' sounded in the alley. Flipping over on her back, she saw Zenda, blaster in hand, fire a shot upwards, above the walls of the ruined side street. Tracking the direction of the shot, Baara's eyes fell on a dark mass tumbling bodily out of a neighboring tower several streets away.
Zenda darted forward, grabbing Baara with one and pulling her to her feet. Even as the pair stumbled forward, a series of energy bolts danced at their feet, fired by whatever remaining sniper still spied upon them from his crow's nest in the tower.
"Shoot him!" Baara hissed.
"Why are you so demanding?" Zenda drawled, shoving the woman behind the burned out husk of a speeder. Baara flinched, covering her head with her hands as another bolt ricocheted off the vehicle. Zenda crouched next to her, eyes scanning the street.
"This is becoming annoyingly familiar," she muttered under her breath.
Baara barely heard her. She was trying to repress a gag as she sprung forward, her mind blank with abject horror and revulsion.
She'd landed on top of a charred and bloody corpse that was hanging halfway out of the speeder. It appeared to be an adult by its size. The gender was unrecognizable due to damage, though the presence of a secondary pair of arms tipped her off on the species.
As always, Zenda seemed unfazed.
The blonde woman's arm darted out, latching onto the back of Baara's tunic and yanking her backward.
"Let me go, let me go!" Baara sobbed, desperately twisting and tugging, but the woman had a grip like durasteel.
"Stop squirming if you don't want to join him!" Zenda exclaimed, exasperated.
Peow! Ping!
Another bolt bounced off the speeder as Zenda cursed under her breath.
"On three."
"I can't..."
"Three."
Again, Baara was shoved forward. Flight took over, and the need to distance herself from the twisted face of the leering corpse, with its melted eyes and teeth showing through burned off lips, proved greater than paralyzing fear.
Dimly, she was aware of Zenda behind her, firing another shot at their attacker.
What felt like an eternity later, she stumbled and collapsed into the dark embrace of one of the few buildings still standing. She took several seconds to catch her breath, shoving down the vomit threatening to spill forth whenever she remembered that face.
Movement behind her made her wheel around, instinctively snatching up a piece of rubble and hurling it.
It bounced harmlessly out into the alley, Zenda having already taken several steps to the side.
"Oh good. You're still alive."