Growing pains
Ben was already waiting by the gate in the pre-dawn gloom when the other workers began to arrive. The big tattooed man, Baar, appeared just before sunrise. He scowled at Ben when he saw him.
"Bit bloody keen, aren't you?"
Ben shrugged. "You said I gotta be here early," he reminded, leaning into the outer-rim accent he'd used yesterday. "I really need the work."
Baar looked him up and down again and shook his head as if despairing of Ben's scrawniness. Then he just tutted and stomped off towards a red stone building.
"Come on, then," he snapped over his shoulder. Ben hurried after.
The man led the way into a rock-cut hallway then into a smaller room cluttered with flimsi, buckets, tools and stacks of seed trays. He slammed the door closed behind them and then suddenly he was rounding on Ben, towering over him.
"The last thing I need is any more trouble, understand? Now, I want to know if you're going to be a threat to my workers, because if you are…"
Now that didn't sound good.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ben said, eyes already darting to the door, calculating how quickly he could get across the room.
"Don't take me for an idiot," Baar snapped. "Just because those quaddies can't tell one biped from another don't mean the rest of us can't. I seen your pic on the news bulletin last night, Ben Waken-"
Ben launched himself straight for the door. Somehow, impossibly, the other man was faster and he caught Ben's wrist in an iron grip. If only he had his 'saber!
Ben twisted his arm and yanked his elbow back, breaking the hold, but Baar was still blocking the way between him and the door. Ben turned for the windows instead, ready to leap...
The man grabbed his arm again, halting his momentum. "Just wait," he said, calmly, and something in his tone made Ben pause.
"What do you want?" Ben demanded.
"Look. I don't know what it is you're supposed to have done, and I don't care."
"I didn't do anything" Ben said, low. He tore his wrist free of the man's grip again, and stepped back out of reach. "I was attacked, I defended myself-"
"Didn't I just say I don't care?" Baar interrupted. "Outsiders don't end up on Ata unless they're running from everything, and there ain't no-one sleeping in a field all night to be first in line for a crappy labourer's job unless it's the only thing between them and the prison mines. Or starvation."
Baar saw Ben's expression of puzzlement, and pointed. "You got chaala seeds on your scarf and that mud on your coat weren't there last night. You been in the fields; I'm not blind. Point is, you get one chance, you hear me? You lay one finger on another worker, I'll drag you to the Lawkeepers myself."
Ben paused, still cautious, but feeling a surprise touch of optimism. "I'm not here to cause trouble," he said. "I just want to work."
"Alright," Baar said, after a moment. "And you better be damn grateful to those morons that crashed their hoversled yesterday. If it hadn't been for the thing with the scaffolding, you'd be out. But you spotted that break before I did, and saved me a lot of hassle. So for that I'm offering you a job. Take it or don't take it, we're even. I don't owe you nothing, understand? No special treatment. Anyone comes here looking for you, and I turn you straight in. I ain't a charity; I just want cheap labour, and I need bipeds with sharp eyes."
Ben nodded, silently. Baar put his knuckles on his hips, and leaned in. "Now, are you fit for working?"
Ben frowned. Fit for working? Yes, the half-dozen burns he bore from 'saber and blaster and the Zygerrian's electrowhip had objected to a night out in the cold; stinging and throbbing complaints were making themselves known across his shoulders, legs and back. But he knew he wasn't showing any discomfort, and that the telltale marks were all well hidden beneath his clothing. But then Baar gestured to Ben's face, and he realised he'd forgotten the gash and mass of bruising on his face where the false Jedi Gurra had struck him with his blaster. No doubt that was coming up beautifully now. Maybe it wasn't just anti-pechnar prejudice that had meant no-one wanted to hire him yesterday. He probably looked like he'd lost more than one cantina brawl.
"Tripped over a brick." Ben said, rapidly, smoothing his hair down to hide the gash on his temple. "I can work, I swear."
"You'd better." Baar turned and rummaged for a flimsi on the desk then scrawled something on it. "Alright. Here."
He thrust the flimsi at Ben. "Work permit. Your name's Neipho Zakkari, you're a grub picker with Unit 12. You work dawn 'til dusk; pay's five credits a day, collect it from the counter before you clock off. I'm Alleesh Baar, your new boss, and I don't want to see you in here again, are we clear?"
Ben nodded, holding the paper tight. "Understood. Thank you."
Alleesh Baar held the door open. "Equipment yard, second door on the right. See Leem for your protective gear. Now get out."
"Yes, sir," said Ben, and he got out.
Ben barely heard the bell ringing, too focused on extracting the wriggling white grub he'd just spotted from the underside of the leaf. He managed to trap the fleshy, thumb-sized parasite between his gloved fingers, pull it loose and, twisting awkwardly, throw it into the bucket by his knee.
A boot nudged his leg. Ben craned his neck to look out through the leaves, and saw one of the other workers standing over him.
"What is it?" Ben asked, looking up.
"Didn't you hear the bell?" the worker said, voice muffled behind his respirator hood. "It's break."
"We can stop?"
"Yeah. Leave your tools here so you know where you were up to."
Ben crawled out from under the straggling purple-leaved tarva plant and straightened up, painfully, feeling his back muscles clench in protest. Through the visor of his own protective hood, he could see nearby workers in his row were indeed laying down their tools beside their work area and heading back out of the rows of plants towards the distant bank and the cart tracks on top. Ben slowly followed suit, hauling the heavy, half-filled bucket up onto his shoulder. At the end of the row, the grub cart sat on its railed track, ready to carry the bucketloads of wriggling parasites away, probably to be incinerated for biofuel or maybe pulped down into fertiliser. Ben had already learned that nothing here was wasted, not even the destructive insects which had infested this field of towering tarva plants. Ben lined up behind the other workers to empty out his own bucket into the cart. Then he joined the straggling group of labourers as they climbed up the bank to a bare strip of dry grass beside the rails, gratefully removing their heavy respiratory hoods and thick gloves before flopping onto the dusty ground.
A crew of Twi'leks were unpacking boxes from a groundcar parked beside the rails, and as soon as Ben's hood and visor were off, the smell of food was immediately overpowering, even over the stinging reek of the tarva plants. Baar hadn't mentioned anything about workers getting given provisions or breaks on duty but Ben wasn't about to check the teeth on a gift bantha. As grateful as he was to have a break from the discomfort of the protective gear and the hours spent crawling under the toxic plants, he was even more grateful for food. Granted, he could probably have scavenged something edible from the fields last night, but it was a risky option when he had no idea what any of the growing things might be. He could not afford to end up poisoning himself now.
Ben tucked his respiratory hood under an arm and went over to where the workers from his line had sprawled out on the grass. The worker who had spoken to him before, a tall Duros, looked up and scowled.
"Your scarf."
"Sorry?"
The Duros gestured to the thick blue cloth draped over his own head and shoulders. "Cover your head, idiot."
He was right; looking around, Ben realised every other worker had covered their heads with scarves or hats as soon as their protective hoods had come off.
"Oh, right." Ben quickly dumped his gear on the floor and pulled the grey cloth out of his pocket, pulling it over his head and shoulders. "Sorry."
The Duros shrugged. "It's no matter to me if a skreatbat takes a piece out of your face."
"Skreatbats. That's those things?" Ben pointed upwards to the dark shapes he could see swooping around high above across the cavern roof.
"Claws as long as your arm," said a stocky human on his right, thick black dreadlocks poking out from under her own vivid green headscarf. "I once saw one carryin' off two caprius at a time."
"Really?" said Ben. He looked up at the circling creatures again. It was too difficult to judge the scale from here, but caprius were large creatures. That seemed...unlikely. Also a scarf wouldn't exactly be much protection against something that was truly that dangerous.
"Don't believe me?" said the woman, shaking her head as if in disappointment. "How'd you think Old Man Baar lost that ear?"
Proceedings were interrupted briefly by the Twi'leks who were now going between the sprawling grub pickers, tossing a water bottle and small box of food to each labourer. Ben caught one and opened it to find a mix of phuff dumplings, cubes of salted caprius cheese, blobs of greyish fungus that tasted rather like stagnant water and a sealed cup of some thick brown liquid. The others seemed to carry their own eating implement with them, comprising a single thin spike used to skewer the food cubes. Ben wiped his hands on his overalls and used his fingers.
"So you're the new Zak, huh?" A figure plopped down on the grass beside him, and he looked up to see the woman with the dreadlocks again. She showed Ben a mouth of sharp teeth.
"Sorry?" Ben asked, not at all put off by her display of aggression and more focussed on trying not to shovel the food into his mouth too indecorously fast.
"We get a new picker like you through every few months," said the Duros on his right with disinterest, and slurped his drink.
"That's right," said the woman, nodding. "Everytime the port gets a new washed-up spacer looking for work and no questions. The real Neipho Zakkari fell into a sinkhole two years back, but Alleesh Baar keeps him on the books and just swaps the face out when drifters like you come by."
"I see," Ben said. There didn't seem much point in denying it. "You can call me Zak. But-"
"Look, whatever you did, no-one cares, alright?" added a diminutive Twi'lek sitting on a bank slightly further off. A second Twi'lek beside him, who was identical but for a severed headtail, nodded. "Or where you came from or whatever your problems are. Just mind your own business, and we'll mind ours."
"Fair enough," Ben agreed, readily. He had already spotted the gang marks on the grinning woman's cheekbones, and the scars from slave collars around the necks of the Twi'lek twins. Looking around the other thirty or so bipeds in this work detail he could see many others had scars or prison tattoos, or the permanently blown pupils and blackened veins of former spice addicts. This was a rough crowd of people worn down and hiding and trying to rebuild broken lives, washed ashore in this place like shipwrecked smugglers on an asteroid belt. People just like him.
"Why aren't there any Kheelians here?" Ben asked the woman with the dreadlocks and the gang tattoos.
She snorted, and stabbed at her food. "They all get work on the harvesting. Grub pickin' ain't work for quaddies. Too big, see? Too clumsy. You gotta be small to get in under the tarva to get the grubs from round the roots. Root grubs'll kill off a whole field of tarva, faster'n you can say mass starvation. Ain't that right, Hain?"
The Duros, Hain, just grunted. The woman didn't seem to be put off by the lack of response. "Course, for the rest of us without all that fur, them plants is as toxic as Rhydonium fuel. They told you that, right? Don't even breathe downwind of a tarva plant or you're gonna have a real bad time, you hear? Like, burn your lungs out, bad time."
"She's exaggerating," said a nearby human, without looking around.
"Leem told me something about the plant being an irritant," Ben said, glancing at his own protective gear.
"Yeah, burn your lungs right out," said the woman, who seemed to be on a roll by now. "And don't get it on your skin neither; saw it melt a man's face off once, melt the whole thing clean off…"
"Reett, shut the hell up and leave the new guy alone," snapped a Cerean female sitting a few metres away.
Reett just raised her voice across the clearing. "Hey, hey! Who thinks I should leave the new guy alone?"
Without even looking around, about 90% of all the sentients within earshot raised hands, paws or flippers in the air.
"See?" said Reett smuggly to the Cerean. "No-one."
She leaned back on her elbows with a satisfied air. The pair of Twi'leks rolled their eyes and went back to their food.
A sound suddenly caught Ben's attention, a sound he hadn't heard in a long time, and he turned towards the cave mouth in time to see a starship, a light freighter of some kind, rise up from behind distant buildings. The space port must be nearby, no more than a klick away. The cargo freighter looked huge as it rose up behind the buildings but it was soon dwarfed by the vastness of the cave mouth as it accelerated away towards the ray shield. As Ben watched, the lights surrounding the oculus ring that hovered at the edge of the shield changed from red to green, signifying a state change, and the ship gunned its sublight engines and slipped out through the shimmering blue of the oculus into the distant sky and quickly vanished from sight. The lights on the oculus blinked once and went red again, sealing the iris closed once more. Through the shimmering shield he could see another ship hovering, waiting to enter. Well, that explained why the Kheelians didn't have a wider presence in the galaxy, if they could launch or land no more than one starcraft at a time. Ben hadn't been able to see from the guards' compartment yesterday, but the train too must pass through a similar access point through the shield, or perhaps through a different distinct tunnel which was shielded separately. Either way, it was no wonder that the civilisation was suffering from an energy crisis, what with maintaining the protective dome covering the ruins of the city above, the extensive shielding across the cave mouth here, and all the other lights and ventilation needed to maintain such a vast population underground. There must be a local power generator somewhere in the City; a hydroelectric or geothermal plant perhaps…
His thoughts were interrupted by movement nearby as Reett shuffled closer. "So what's your story, eh, Zak?" She demanded. "Escape from slavers, rob a casino? Kill someone? Everyone's done something. Hain here murdered his lover with a pitchfork, Shaela ran away from a cult, and these two," she gestured to the Twi'leks, "stole from the largest organ trafficking cartel in the Outer Rim. Me, I used to run with this crew in the Acallarid belt. Pirates, you know? Shipjacking. Man, I flew some beauties back in the day, 'fore they busted me."
"Right," said Ben, cautiously. The others didn't bother to deny Reett's statements by this point; either they were actually true, or her exaggerations were apparently such a common occurrence that no-one paid them any attention. Instead of answering the question, Ben pointed away across the farmlands to where the bright hub of the City could just be made out like glittering peaks. "What's with the weird mountains over there?" he asked. The information might be useful and also it might divert Reett from her line of questioning. Luckily, the woman latched onto the new conversation with gusto.
"That's what they call the Spires. Stalagmites, aren't they?" Reett said. She'd finished eating and was now jabbing the point of her eating pick into the grass, full of twitching energy. "The quaddies trashed their own city and moved the whole caboodle down here after that big war they had. The Spires is where all the fancy quaddie stuff happens, you know. Colleges and archives and stuff. The head Kheeli bossman lives there."
"The ruler?"
"Yeah. Syndic Prime, they call her. Plus it's where the Lawkeepers have their lair, so I'd stay clear if I were you, Zak."
"And the pillars?"
Even from this distance the two massive pillars that supported the cave roof were visible, though from here they looked more like vast bare tree trunks emerging from behind the mass of stalagmites below.
"Radio masts," Reett said, darkly. "For controlling the skreatbats."
The work bell sounded a few minutes later and with grumbling and complaining the work detail began to move again. "Reett's harmless," the Duros named Hain muttered to Ben as they donned their anonymous protective gear. "Just don't believe a word she says. And for stars sake don't give her any credits."
Well, Ben thought to himself. That shouldn't be hard.
So the grub pickers of Work Unit 12 headed back into the tarva field and set to their afternoon's work. And tiring and laborious work it was, peering through fogged visors and the thick leaves for the movement of the fat grubs, crawling beneath the low branches or climbing up between the thick stems, sweating and clumsy in their protective suits, clearing the parasites from one branch, then the next, then the next. Once in the late afternoon Ben was given a demonstration of why the protective gear was needed; a Sullustan dropped a glove and while reaching to grab it, brushed up against a tarva leaf with his bare arm. The skin quickly reddened and blistered, and even before his workmates were able to wash the sticky sap off, the hand had swollen up to twice its size. The Sullustan went back to the agri hub to go find medical treatment, sweaty and swearing. Not life-threatening, but not pleasant.
By the time the bell rang for the end of the work day, the natural light coming through the shield had already faded so much that they were mainly forced to work by the flashlights on their face visors, the grubs fluorescing ghostly white in the torch beams. Ben hauled the last bucket, his eleventh of the day, to the waste truck and then fell in behind the other pickers as they made their straggling way back along the causeway to the main district hub. For the entirety of their long walk and the following half turn waiting in line for the day's wages, Ben's self-appointed guide Reett furnished him with large quantities of facts and advice about life in the City, of which only a small proportion sounded even remotely plausible. But reading between the lines of her rampant exaggeration and rambling conspiracy theories Ben did learn rather a lot. The City generally seemed to be considered relatively safe and low crime in comparison with other major population hubs in the galaxy, due in part to the peaceful ways of the locals, but also to the strict diligence of the Lawkeepers and the unflinching legal system. Bipeds, it seemed, were usually unpopular with everyone and were held to blame for most misfortune and crime that took place on the planet, and humans generally lived in a ghetto on the other side of the Spires known as Paper Town. Ben also learned that to get a proper Ident card, bipeds had to present the entry visa they were given by officials at the space port to the Offworlder Registry Office. Well, that was no good for him as he'd never been to the spaceport yet, but the more Reett talked, the more Ben realised that he was far from alone amongst the sentients here without an official identity. It seemed that traffickers had been tempting poor families from other worlds with descriptions of Ata's peaceful city, charging crippling transport fees to smuggle them onto the planet and then dumping them far away on the edge of the Scarred Plains at illegal landing sites. And even for those that managed to reach the City by train, without visas or idents their work options were, as Ben had found, limited to bosses like Baar who cared more about cheap labour than government legislation. Maybe that explained why those that ended up in Green District tended to stay there; all of the others in the work unit, apart from the Twi'lek twins Jerda and Kamin, had been on Ata for a year or more. There was nowhere else for them to go.
Ben was called up to the counter in his turn, and the droid dropped the wages he had earned, five square plastoid chips, into his palm. It was the first time Ben had ever seen this planet's currency up close. He held the currency chips in his hand as he leaned against the gate, watching Rett, Hain and the other farmhands and labourers head out into the street towards their homes. Ben didn't know how much five chips was worth, probably not all that much, but for the moment it didn't matter. The ache in his shoulders and back from carrying the buckets, the exhaustion of a hard day's labour, the blisters from his badly-fitting boots—suddenly it all seemed worth it. He'd earned these coins, as meagre as they were. Apart from his lightsaber, these credits were the only thing he had ever owned that wasn't a gift, a fake, or just outright stolen. Even the ship he'd crash landed in hadn't really been his, that much he remembered. Up until now, the generosity of the Kheelians had known no bounds, and Ben would always be grateful and indebted to them for their unthinking kindness. But he had to admit, there was nothing quite like the feeling, the freedom, of starting to stand up on his own feet again.
That night was much like the one before, except this time he spent one of his precious credit chips to buy a handful of prepackaged protein and grain bars from a mechanical vendor in the street outside the agri hub. Someone had painted the words FOR PECHNAR in uneven Aurebesh letters on the glass, so there was a good chance the food was edible. And food tonight meant that when he fell asleep to the whispering of the rustling seed pods, it wasn't also accompanied by the sound of his stomach rumbling. When he woke at dawn he was aching horribly from the previous day's labours and from another night on the cold ground, but at least he now had breakfast. At this rate he would only have to work another ten-day and he'd probably be able to afford to buy a blanket.
He went to work.
Today the Sullustan was back, though his hand was heavily bandaged. Reett showed Ben how to clean the inside of his ventilation mask with soap so it didn't fog up so much, informed him that the moons were holograms and that the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic was probably a clone, and then asked to borrow some credits. Ben politely refused, and Reett didn't seem particularly offended. The midday meal was a large serving of the blue algae, which tasted only marginally less bad than it smelled, three pieces of orange bread and a fist-sized black fruit the others informed him was called an azkop. The fruit, at least, tasted tolerable.
Ben finally felt like he was starting to find his feet when fate next tried to knock him down. He was getting close to filling his eighteenth grub bucket, a marked increase on yesterday's yield, when he suddenly sensed eyes on him. He glanced up to see Alleesh Baar standing at the edge of the cart tracks on the causeway above, arms folded, watching him with an unreadable expression. Baar made no sign that he wanted Ben to stop working, so Ben turned back to his tarva plant, trying not to feel his neck prickling. Baar said nothing to him although he stayed in the 12th Unit's work area for several hours, making repairs to the grub cart, and then overseeing some alteration to the irrigation system in the adjacent field. Even when he wasn't anywhere near Ben, Ben still felt under his scrutiny. But maybe Baar's proximity was just coincidence.
That theory was rapidly weakened when the sound of an engine on the road announced the arrival of a landspeeder driven by Leem, the quartermaster. Ben heard a distant mutter of their voices as he spoke to Baar, and then two new Kheelian voices. He couldn't make out much of what they were saying until suddenly one sound reached him clearly.
"...Waken."
Ben ducked down beneath the lower branches of his tarva plant as if reaching for a troublesome root grub, and used the motion to glance up towards the road. Baar was there, and Leem, and two green-clad Lawkeepers.
Oh, this was not good. Not good at all. Hadn't Baar literally told Ben he'd sell him out at the first opportunity? But Ben had worked hard, kept his head down, like he'd promised. Didn't that count for something? The Force wasn't telling him to run and he couldn't sense danger. What should he do? Just as Ben was about to try slip away into the fields under cover of the tarva plants and make a run for it, he heard Barr's voice, carrying clearly.
"Don't know him."
Ben froze, heart racing, senses poised for danger. He saw one of the Kheeli Lawkeepers hold a piece of flimsi out towards Baar. The man glanced at it, then folded his arms.
"I told you. I don't know him."
There was another rumble of voices, and then Baar audibly sighed.
"Fine. Listen up, Unit 12!" he bellowed. Around Ben, all the grub pickers crawled out from under and between tightly packed leaves and looked up towards the road.
Baar held up the sheet of flimsi towards them. It was the picture the bounty hunters had brought, the one of the poised, unruffled, serious man with his neat beard and perfect copper hair. It was a picture Ben was really starting to dislike. "Anyone seen a guy looks like this?" Baar said.
There was a resounding silence as the Kheelian Lawkeepers stared down at the grub pickers, a sea of hoods and anonymous full-face visors. No-one said a word.
Baar let the silence continue for an awkward thirty seconds before he handed the flimsi back to the Lawkeeper.
"See? I told you. Don't know anyone who looks like that and I haven't hired no-one by that name. If you wanna search every residence, warehouse, flop house and lodging in Paper Town, or interrogate all 2,091 of my farmhands, be my guest. But the Lawkeeper Officer will owe me for every second of their work time you waste."
And with that, Alleesh Baar stomped off back to the irrigation pipes without another glance at the Lawkeepers. Eventually the Kheelians went back to the landspeeder and Leem drove them away. The grub pickers turned back to their tasks, and not one of them looked at Ben. Perhaps he really was more unrecognisable than he thought. But as the Twi'lek twins passed by, the one that talked, Jerda, patted a hand on Ben's shoulder.
"Everyone's running from something," Jerda murmured, and then the Twi'lek pair disappeared into the foliage before Ben could say anything back.
Perhaps he was still safe here, after all, then. For now.
The evening finally arrived and Unit 12 began their slow trek back to the agri hub to strip off their protective gear, collect the day's wages and return to their homes. No-one even mentioned the visit by the Lawkeepers again, and if the news bulletin was still reporting the story of the incident on the train, no-one mentioned that either. Ben bid the others goodbye, went to buy his vending machine dinner, and headed back inside the gates, intending to wait until enough onlookers had left that he felt he could safely head back out into the fields to find a sheltered place to sleep.
To his rather unpleasant surprise, however, Alleesh Baar was waiting for him inside the yard. Ben clocked him then made as if to turn straight back around but Baar caught his eye.
"You," Baar ordered. "Don't move."
Ben reluctantly did as he was told. Baar didn't say anything more and they stood in the cold wind as the straggling workers dispersed around them and flowed out of the gates until at last they were the only two left standing in the yard. Ben decided to face the situation head on.
"Something I can help you with?" he said, trying not to shiver.
Baar scowled at him.
"Follow me," he said. He turned away and stomped back across the yard. With more than a little trepidation, Ben followed, with no choice but to trust the Force to warn him of danger.
Baar turned left on the far side of the yard and continued on for a few hundred metres out into the night away from the agri hub. They were heading towards a cluster of large biodomes; multifaceted half domes of transparisteel, all glowing with a yellow luminescence against the black fields around. The wind was cold.
Baar walked onwards towards one of the smallest domes, a few hundred metres across, and approached the sealed access door.
"Watch," he ordered, and slowly entered a code, holding his hand so Ben could see the touchpad and the shape he drew onto it with one finger. The climate control door opened with a hiss. Baar stomped inside, and Ben followed.
The first thing he noticed was the warmth of the air all around, and then Ben looked up and saw he had stepped into a jungle paradise. Tall, luscious greenery filled the dome from floor to roof, insects fluttered between each branch, and exotic flowers dropped heavy fragrances into the air. High above, a huge ventilation fan in the dome roof rotated slowly, circulating the heated air that was rich with the smell of mulch and sap. The Force rang with life all around. There were even birds up there, fluttering between the shadows of the tree trunks. Trees! Ben hadn't seen trees since-
His thoughts derailed suddenly as he realised Baar hadn't stopped to wait for Ben to gawp at the incredible sight. Instead the foreman had continued on along the sunken grating set into the forest floor to the back of the dome where there was a control and monitoring station and a tool store. Ben hurried after him, and found Baar pulling a roll of weed-proof matting out from a store cupboard and dumping it on the walkway.
"What's going on?" Ben asked.
"The system is on the fritz," Baar said, and then pointed at areas of the control panel.
"Temperature. Humidity. PH. Check those displays every two hours, that one every four. If the needle gets out of the blue range, manually adjust that dial."
Baar turned back from the panel, and dumped some sacking onto the mat, almost like a blanket on a bed. Then he turned, brushing past Ben, and walked back towards the biodome's door. "Be out before dawn," he ordered, over his shoulder.
"Wait a moment. You want me to stay here?" Ben asked. Baar stopped and turned, almost growling.
"Can't have you sleeping in the challa fields every bloody night, Zak. It's a sensitive crop; you'll disturb the ecosystem. So keep an eye on those dials. I expect you to work for the privilege. Don't make me regret it."
"No, no, it's good. It's great. Thank you."
Baar grunted, and turned back towards the exit.
"Baar, wait." Ben came forward, calling after him again. "I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier. With the Lawkeepers."
"I'm protecting my profit margins," Baar said. "That's all. The Lawkeepers find you here, they start cracking down on my employment records. Then I can only hire visas or locals, and my costs skyrocket. Easier for everyone this way."
"Still. You didn't have to help me out."
"No, I didn't. So don't you forget it."
Baar went over to the wall, and pulled a large breaker switch near the door with a solid clunk. The artificial sunlight shining down on them from above went out, plunging the forest into a dusk-like gloom. A dozen huge scarlet insects, each the size of Ben's forearm, disturbed by the change in light, rose up into the air in a shimmering mass in the near night. One settled briefly on Baar's sleeve, gauzy wings trembling. Baar huffed at it, impatiently, and it fluttered away.
Ben watched the insect flutter past him. His hands itched for a datapad and a stilo to write down everything he was seeing, to study every aspect of it. "Are all the biodomes like this one?" he asked, unable to help himself. "It's incredible."
Baar almost softened slightly and lifted his hand off the door. "No. This one's mostly for Leem's little projects, nothing all that delicate. The other domes recreate climates for offworld plants that need a more controlled environment."
"Are these all crops?" Ben gestured to the lush trees around him, gently silhouetted against the low glow of the city lights beyond.
"No. We grow for other industries too, like the dyers or pharmacists, or for the nerds up at the university. Mostly it's all for phytoremediation testing. Decontaminating the Old City. Anyway." Baar pointed to a set of pipes which were carrying water into shallow troughs along the plant roots. "Water's drinkable." He gave Ben a pointed look through the gloom. "Probably wouldn't hurt no-one if you were to use it for washing, neither."
Ben took the unsubtle complaint on board. He was quite aware he had been working, sweating and sleeping in the same clothes for days now, after all. No doubt they were getting pretty ripe. As he stepped towards the trough, a bird in a tree on his right suddenly rustled and gave a chirp. He peered into the dark of the foliage, unable to make out the shape of it.
"Those birds," Ben asked. "What are they called?"
Baar snorted. "You really are fresh off the boat, ain't you? Those aren't birds, friend, they're lizards. Szaari lizards." He headed back towards the door. "If you didn't eat yet," he called over his shoulder, "the eggs are edible. There's nests around the place, under the roots."
Ben shuddered. "Thank you, but no. I've eaten szaari eggs before. I'm not that desperate."
Baar laughed, a sudden bark of sound, and then he paused by the door and leaned into one of the straggly plants. He deftly broke two large, fleshy white seed pods and threw them underarm to Ben.
"Eat," he ordered. "And watch those dials."
Then he left, closing the door firmly behind him. Looking out through the glass, Ben could follow Baar's route across the farm as one by one the lights in the other biodomes went out and the farm closed up for the night. Inside this dome, the diodes set into the path shed a low ambient light across the shadowy trees, more than enough light by which to wash his clothes and self in the water trough, and spread his wet things over nearby branches. While his clothes dried in the steady warmth of the jungle, Ben wrapped himself in the cloth sacking and sat down on the raised edge of the path in the twilight gloom of the forest to eat. The pods had a buttery, mellow taste, and the seeds inside were deep blue and glossy, like droplets of oil. While he ate, Ben watched the szaari lizards. They flitted past in flocks, or swooped down to dip into the water troughs. They were odd creatures, perhaps 20cm from nose to scaly tail, patterned white and black, with black, beady eyes and webbed wings set right behind blunt, almost fish-like heads.
In the warmth of the jungle, Ben's clothes were soon dry enough to wear, and he got ready to sleep. But although he was exhausted, even though he was warm and comfortable, wore clean clothes and had a meal inside him, Ben still found it difficult to find rest. For one thing he was sore all over from days of hard labour, and for another there was something about this forest encased inside a room, about the fluttering of the insects, the trickle of the water through the irrigation system, the sense of overwhelming life...it felt comforting. Familiar. Perhaps it just reminded him of the cottage garden outside the house back in Thet. He sat on the matting and breathed in the scent of the wet earth, of the lush foliage all around. It was growing easier every time he tried to slip into that calm, meditative state, and now within minutes he found his breaths evening out, his thoughts becoming soft and translucent, and emotions dissipating like grass seeds on the air. The Force was everywhere and it was everything.
For a long time he just drifted, letting the streams of the Force carry his consciousness wherever they would. Then, deep in the boundless ocean of the Force, he touched something. At first he wasn't sure what it was. There was something here, waiting; it felt almost like he was looking across a vast landscape towards a distant light, one emitting a heat and brightness that drew him closer like a moth to a flame. He reached out, cautious but curious too, trying to get a sense of the thing. There was light and warmth, emotion and power and a pulsing pressure like a heartbeat, and it was then that he realised that he was brushing against another mind, another sentient consciousness. Without warning, it shifted and transformed; expanding, burning hot like a supernova across his thoughts.
The mind before him had been sleeping, and he had just woken it up.
As if he had thrust his hand into a burning forge, Ben's mind recoiled, darting away from that other presence. But it was too late. Something grabbed hold of him and held him inescapably. He almost panicked, ready to fight, but to his surprise he felt the grip on his mind respond to his fear, and the thing that held him suddenly let go. The presence before him dimmed itself, scalding heat going out of the fire: not dying down, but being forcibly pulled back, controlled, banked and hidden. It had sensed his fear, and withdrawn, like coaxing a skittish loth-cat. So he stayed.
No longer blinded by the heat of that inferno, Ben could now sense emotions there in that presence like the colours of a spiral galaxy. Overlying all was a sickly yellow guilt, beneath which he saw muddy regret, frustration of vivid green, and a rich claret-coloured love stained throughout with an inky terror, a fear of loss that was almost overwhelming. Without even knowing how or why, Ben reached out to offer comfort. There was no speech here, nothing as clumsy and archaic as words, but as he offered up what reassurance he had—a little flicker of soothing blue—and he could sense understanding back, and familiarity, even as the colours swirled and morphed again, transforming from mauve relief into ochre annoyance, and desperation of bright scarlet flame. Then everything else faded. A new colour emerged and soon it was blocking out all the others, left dull and intangible in the shadow of its durasteel walls, a solid unyielding grey of determination. This other strange consciousness wanted something, something from Ben. And it was going to get it.
With a start, Ben opened his eyes. He was seated on his makeshift bed in the biodome, on the farm, in Green District. He was in the City of Kheelians. It was dark. All around rose the warm scent of the forest—leaves, mulch and petrichor—and the sounds too: a rustling and fluttering of the winged lizards, trickling water, the heavy thrum of the distant fan turning lazily in the darkness above. Whatever he had brushed against with his mind, whatever he had just woken with his ill-advised meddling...the strange connection that linked them quickly faded like smoke in the wind, and was gone. Ben was alone.
Ben lay down. Despite his fears and aches, he fell instantly into a deep sleep. If he had dreams, he didn't remember. In the morning, he ate a grain bar, checked the dials, and slipped out of the dome before dawn.
After that, Ben's days fell quickly into a pattern. Each morning he was waiting by the agri hub when the sun's first light came creeping in through the ray shield to spill into the cavern and paint the city with a pale blue dawn. The rest of the units arrived on the conveyors in dribs and drabs from their homes in Paper Town, and Leem read out the day's work rota. Twelve gruelling turns of work followed, crawling beneath the stinging, acrid leaves, sweating in the airless protection hoods, hauling the heavy buckets of writhing grubs away from the precious tarvaroot crop. Each evening brought with it a weary trek back across the gloomy fields, the long wait in line at the agri hub for a handful of precious credit chips, and a protein bar dinner. Then, at last, Ben returned to the warm, fragrant darkness of the biodome, and the flutter of the lizards that settled on his shoulders and hair while he slept. Ben ended every day exhausted, sometimes burned or blistered from the tarva leaves, always hungry and aching. But nevertheless, there was satisfaction to be found here. The work was unending, for as soon as one field was clear, they were sent to another, and the next. But the simplicity of the task held its own appeal: grub after grub, leaf after leaf, branch, plant, and field, until the daylight was gone. The others of his work unit - Hain, Reett, Shaela, the twins Jerda and Kamin, and all the others - they bickered and laughed at each other, jeered and conspired, gossiped about the supervisors, about which lodging house had the worst skitterbugs, about who was fripping whom, and there was something comforting in the commonplace. Their mundane little scandals, the monotony of Ben's days, simple food and uncomplicated company, followed by the dreamless, exhausted sleep brought about by hour after hour of hard, physical work. Perhaps, one day, he would long for more. But for now, this was enough. He could survive here, make a life perhaps.
But it would not last. Nothing lasted, not unless he fought for it. And there was work still for Ben to do, tasks that did not involve grubs or tarva plants or harvesters, and for which the stakes could not be higher. There had been no more return visits by the Lawkeepers into the farm itself, but twice he had seen them in the street beyond the agri hub. He saw nothing of the bounty hunters. It seemed they had lost his scent for now, but the sense of pursuit was ever close by. The moment had come to take his fate into his own hands.
It was now the morning of the fifth day since he had arrived in the City, and high time to set in motion the next stage of the plan he had concocted back on the train all those days ago. The first task was to send two messages. Nothing that would draw suspicion, or give much away if intercepted. Indeed, one of the notes was blank, but that didn't matter. It was more about the timing. With some trepidation, Ben recruited Reett's assistance. She was hardly the ideal secret conspirator, but she had two main points in her favour: firstly that she was always on the lookout for extra credits, and so the promise of reward equivalent to a day's wages for the hour it would take to stop at two addresses in Blue District and Paper Town was therefore quite the bargain. And secondly, if she told anyone that quiet, unobtrusive farm labourer Zak Neipho was sending secret messages to journalists, they'd be unlikely to believe her.
Escaping from work was step two, and he needed a way to disappear for a day or two with no questions asked. Fortunately, the mechanism for that was readily available. The morning after Reett delivered the notes, his sixth day in the City, Ben carelessly removed a glove to wipe the sweat from his eyes, then, feigning a stumble, throwing out a hand to catch his fall. That was all it took to give the appearance of plunging his bare arm directly into the tarva foliage. Of course, Ben had no intention of really getting enough of the toxic sap on his skin to leave him seriously damaged, but he needed it to look convincing. Even the slightest brush of the tarva leaves was quite painful, and the skin across the back of his hand started to blister rapidly. Cosmetised by a quick smear of the crushed jubaberries that Ben had found growing beside the road yesterday, and the wound was already starting to look red and nasty.
Ben stumbled out of the field, clutching his arm, groaning in pain. His new work companions gathered round him with sympathetic, and slightly morbid, fascination. Hain and Kamin did what they could to wash the wound, though Ben was careful not to let them see it too well, still aiming for the injury to seem worse than it was. In the end the field supervisor was summoned, who took one look at the red, blistered skin and sent Ben away to find a doctor, and not to come back until he could work.
So it was barely a turn into the morning shift when Ben found himself out on the main street in Green District with an ice pack around his throbbing arm and with the rest of the day as his own. Careful questioning of the talkative Reett over the last few days had informed him how to get to and from the spaceport in ways that avoided the main conveyor, and Ben set off confidently, weaving his way through the back streets and narrow alleys that passed between the huge warehouses and food processing plants of Green District towards the ray shield.
Just one turn later, the spaceport appeared so suddenly it was almost a surprise. He had crossed the street to avoid a noisy tavern named, according to a hand-painted sign, The Bolt Hole. The rough spacer patrons spilled out onto the pavement in a slovenly sprawl. Ben turned the corner around the side of the bar and the red stone buildings fell away, and before him lay the space port. It was a huge open area, perhaps a klick across, and roughly octagonal in shape with ten docking bays housed on each of the eight sides. About half the docks housed freighters and shuttles, and one or two held even larger starships. But there was another problem. Blocking the street ahead was a security fence, some 10 metres high, humming with power. Reett had not mentioned that. All along the top were sensors and cameras, clearly designed to prevent any from accessing or leaving the port in any direction but the main gate that lay on the far side of the port, leading out onto the conveyors. No doubt the Kheelians that guarded the gates would be less than keen to allow an unregistered offworlder, one who also just happened to be wanted by the law, to just wander in. Ben looked up at the fence again, starting to feel dismayed. He could perhaps climb it, or jump it using the Force. But there were a dozen sentients around, and there was no way he could do so unseen.
"You look stuck, yeah?" said a familiar voice behind him. Ben managed not to groan as he turned.
"Reett. What are you doing here?"
The woman folded her arms, looking smug. "I could say the same, Zak."
"I'm looking for a doctor," Ben lied, motioning to his blistered arm. "Thought there'd probably be one out near the port, somewhere. For offworlders."
"Is that really the best story you could come up with?" said Reett. "If you wanted to quit, you could just leave, you know. Baar will just replace you if you don't turn up for a few days anyway. But I can tell you was up to something. So I followed you when you skived off, and here we are."
"I don't want to quit," Ben said, quickly. "I need this job. Please, don't tell anyone you saw me here."
"I won't," the woman said, amiably. "'s long as you tell me what you're doin'.
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I'm nosey and you're weird. And you owe me ten credits."
"Ten?" Ben raised an eyebrow. "We agreed on five."
"It was five for handing over those letters. It's another five for me not to tell everyone what you're doing."
"You don't even know what I'm doing."
"Then I'll make something up, and it'll be way worse," she said, with a grin of those sharp teeth.
"I'm meeting a friend," Ben admitted.
"In the port? An offworlder?"
"No," Ben said. "Someone who lives here in the City. We have something to talk about."
"Ooh," said Reett, drawing the work out very long. "Is it smuggling?"
"No," said Ben, firmly. "It's nothing like that. It's personal. I just need to speak to them. Then I'll be back at work tomorrow. There really isn't anything to know. Please, just go back."
"How're you getting through the fence then?" said Reett. She didn't look like she was even considering leaving. Ben glanced back at the impassible fence behind him.
"I'll come up with something," he said.
Reett huffed. "Come on," she said, and grabbed his arm. Ben tried to protest but she had already dragged him back down the alley, through the weaving crowd of drunken spacers and in through the door of the Bolt Hole. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside, so the first thing that hit him was the smell; unwashed bodies, exhaust fumes, blaster carbon, and cheap booze so strong it made his eyes water. Reett weaved them through the crowd towards the bar at the back of the room. The barman, a round-faced Kheelian, watched them, impassively. Reett finally let go of Ben's arm only to replace it with an open palm held our under his nose.
"Now what?" Ben said, crossly.
"Give me twenty credits," Reett said.
"Why?"
"You want to get into the space port, yeah?" she said, jerking her chin towards the barman. "That's what it costs to get through the fence."
"It's twenty credits!? That's four day's pay!"
"Well," Reett clarified. "Actually it's eight. But there's two of us, plus I'm charging four for my valuable insider information."
"I'm not taking you anywhere!" Ben hissed, outraged. "Besides, I only have twenty-one credits."
"One's better than none," Reett said, pragmatically. "And now you owe me fourteen credits, so you're going nowhere without me. Now, don't be a cheapskate, Zak, and just pay the nice Kheelian, will you?"
Resisting the urge to curse, Ben pulled sixteen plastoid chips out of his pocket and put them into Reett's grubby hand. She glanced at the money, noting the absence of her fee with a sigh, but she marched over to the bar anyway and slid the credits across the chipped surface to the Kheelian on duty, leaning in to whisper something in his ear. The credits disappeared like magic, and the Kheelian nodded towards a dark door in a shadowed corner. Ben followed Reett through and found himself in a narrow stone alley between the back of the tavern and the fence. Following his unwelcome guide, Ben weaved his way through piles of crates, trash canisters and stripped out starship parts, until Reett paused and pointed towards an unobtrusive block of rusting durasteel that Ben thought it was part of the exhaust venting system from a mid-sized star freighter. Pushing aside a piece of twisted metal sheeting revealed a dark hole. With more than a few reservations, Ben followed Reett's sweeping gesture and wriggled down beneath the venting pipes until he found himself in a makeshift tunnel. After just a moment of crawling, the tunnel sloped up again and he came up into the light. Reett emerged just behind him, and led him on again, squeezing them through a haphazard stack of freighter crates until suddenly they were out. The fence lay behind them, and they stood inside the vast openness of the space port.
The air was lit up with shouts of the workers, clanging machinery and the hiss of welders, and was heavy with the stench of ozone, fuel, oil, and overheated metal. Hundreds of sentients, the most he had ever seen in one place before, were at work around the area, unloading goods or making repairs, or clustered in chattering groups, laughing or haggling or playing dice. Even though Ben knew Ata had a relatively small spaceport - tiny, even, given it was the only one on a whole planet - he still found himself staring around like an idiot tourist at the vast scale of what he was witnessing. As he watched, a ship far across the port, a TUG-31 fitted out for salvage, rose up with a distant roar of engines and swirl of hot dust, flew out through the centre of the port and then shot up into the sky above them. It was soon a distant shape silhouetted against the vastness of the shimmering shield. Within minutes its former docking bay was taken by a rather battered Lantillian light freighter, which set down with the jolting landing of an inexperienced pilot. Ben grimaced.
Reett interrupted his contemplations in her own inimitable style. "Now what?" she demanded.
"What time is it?" Ben said, instead of answering. He hadn't seen any sign of the sentients he was waiting for, but neither had he spotted any Lawkeepers here, nor any sign of the false jedi from the train. That would make this easier.
"Dunno," said Reett. "Midday-ish?"
Ben pulled his attention back to the task in hand. After checking his headscarf hid as much of his face as possible, he set off towards where the nearest array of ships were berthed. It was the work of perhaps half a turn to identify the right ship for his purposes—bay 23, where a target flight crew were putting a surprisingly nice refitted Nu-class transport shuttle through its last preflight checks—then it was just a matter of settling down on a set of crates with a good vista across the port, and waiting. Of course, Reett got bored after fewer than ten minutes, and began throwing stones at a nearby fuel canister with sharp little pings. A Rodian standing on the cargo ramp of the shuttle, one of the crew probably, yelled at her. Ben waved a hand in apology and knocked the next stone out of Reett's hand.
"Stop it," he told her, firmly, as he went back to scanning the crowd, alert for any familiar face.
"I'm bored."
"No-one asked you to come," Ben pointed out. "In fact, I specifically recall asking you to leave, on more than one occasion."
"I ain't going anywhere, Zak, 'less I get paid first. You owe me."
Ben muttered a curse under his breath, and it was then that he spotted the very figure he had been waiting for. Weaving between the overflowing freight hover-trolleys, head turning left to right as if searching for something, was an unusually tall Dhosan with pale mauve fur. The reporter, Marcovee.
Ben turned back to Reett. He had to get rid of her.
"Please, just go away?" Ben asked her. "This is going to be frightfully dull. I'll find you in half a turn, or so."
Reett shook her head. "Nope."
"Leave," said Ben, allowing the Force to colour the words with clear compulsion.
Reett sighed and leapt down from her crate. "Alright, fine. I'll leave...if you pay me."
Glowering at her, Ben dug into his pocket and handed over his last five credits chips. Reett snatched them up with a wild flash of teeth, and spun away.
"Laters," she said, and was gone.
Ben took a moment to breathe, and let the frustration her very presence caused flow out of him, before he turned back to the task in hand. Marcovee was still walking slowly around the perimeter by the docking bays, peering into each. Ben waited until the Dhosan was closer before stepping from behind the crates.
"Well, well!" Marcovee said, loping over. "Ben Waken. Where on Ata have you been hiding?"
"Here and there," Ben evaded. "But I'm done with hiding now. I wanted to talk to you."
"Yes, I got your message," said Marcovee. "You look like trzk, by the way."
"I'm aware," Ben said, dryly. "But listen. Last time we spoke, you said you were looking for a story. The true story about what happened on the train, not just the rumours born of old prejudice. Is that still the case?"
Marcovee's weight shifted. "It was. Then you had that mean Kheeli lady throw me out."
Ben arched an eyebrow. "You did lie to me. You claimed to be a lawyer."
The reporter shrugged, unashamed.
Ben sighed. "Look," he said. "The Lawkeepers are still hunting for me, the Jedi too, no doubt."
"Oh, certainly," said Marcovee. "We still show your picture on the night bulletin. Your scary doctor friend keeps coming into the office, telling everyone you are innocent and demanding we report it."
Damn it all, Shaarm. That was not what we planned...
"Well, now I'm telling you my side of things. Believe me, no other journalists will get to hear this but you."
"Why now?" said Marcovee, although as if by magic a small voice recorder had already appeared in the reporter's hand.
Ben gestured behind himself to the transport shuttle. "Because I'm leaving. Now. Today. It's clear I can't stay here, not with my enemies hunting me. The only way I'll ever be safe is far away from here."
"And what do you want in return?" said Marcovee, curiously. "I get an exclusive—and this is the news story of the year! But what is in it for you? Do you want money?"
"No, no. But everything I tell you, I want you to report," Ben said. "As far and wide as you can. Tell everyone how we met here, what I told you about the events on the train, and that I left Ata, unwilling to risk the vagaries of Kheelian justice. I'll give you the story. You report it. But there is one condition - you keep my friends' names out of it. And if they come to your publication offering interviews or whatever, you send them away; tell them you don't want their story, do you understand? They are not to be involved."
"All right," said Marcovee, with not one moment of hesitation. The recorder clicked on. "So tell me how it all started."
So Ben told his story, and it was the truth. Or at least, broadly the truth. He spoke of how he had escaped from the bounty hunters or slavers or whatever they were, who had been holding him prisoner. He spoke about his first escape, his long weeks of hiding and flight from danger into danger. But just as when he had last told this story to Ysella back in the Dhosana enclave in Tszaaf, there were certain details which Ben kept to himself. The names of all those who had taken him in or helped him. The strange Force powers which he now held. His own unexplained and enduring memory loss. Then at last Ben came to the subject which was of greatest import to both of them; the events on the train, and the death of the man called Gurra.
"So it genuinely was an accident?" Marcovee demanded. "Even though they had tried to traffic you somewhere, maybe have you killed?"
"It was an accident," Ben agreed. "I did not mean for anyone to die. I just wanted to get away from them. But I knew the Lawkeepers would not listen."
Marcovee was tapping at the recorder, looking thoughtful.
"What's the matter?"
The journalist sighed. "I cannot say I am not a little disappointed. I was hoping for something really sensational. An accident just seems so...quotidian."
"Ah, but there is a scandal here," Ben pointed out. "It just isn't me. Because not only does this institutional xenophobia against bipeds mean that no court or Lawkeeper would even consider any case for my innocence, it also means that no-one will investigate the claims of these 'Jedi' as they ought. Gurra and his allies are frauds of the worst degree; their leader pretends to be a Jedi to gain the confidence and assistance of those who have respect for that order. But they are no more than common criminals, tricksters and slavers. False Jedi, who have somehow convinced the very institutions designed to protect you and maintain the key tenets of your culture—peace, non-violence and hospitality—to hand over an innocent man to them without trial or question. Moreover, their leader…"
Ben suddenly hesitated, startled out of his impassioned anger as his thoughts stumbled over another absence in his mind, one that felt oddly fresh like a recently pulled tooth.
Marcovee seemed not to notice his distraction. "Their leader is the two-walker with the lighter fur, right? What about him?"
"The name he uses…" Ben said, slowly, suddenly uncertain. "I think that too is false. He also claims to be what he is not."
"What name is that? I have not heard it anywhere. The Lawkeepers are just referring to them as 'the Jedi'."
"I...I don't recall."
"Alright," said Marcovee, unperturbed. "It is an interesting angle, I suppose. If it is true, of course. False Jedi in our midst...I can work with that. But let us carry on. The other two-walker is dead, and the guards arrest you. How did you get off the train? Did you bribe a guard?"
"No. No, I acted alone. I picked the lock on the binder cuffs then hid in the crawlspace. As soon as it was dark I ran for it. It was a miracle no-one saw me. Since then I have been hiding in a disused building in Paper Town."
"I did not think there were any empty buildings in Paper Town," Marcovee muttered, but didn't push. "And you, Ben? What will you do now?"
Ben put his hands into his pockets. "Leave this planet. Get out of the system if I can. There'll be no more need for those that are hunting me to stay here any longer once I am gone, after all. I will try to find work, somewhere, far away from this place."
"What about your friends here?"
"What about them?" Ben said.
Marcovee shrugged. "I thought you might want to see them before you go."
"I think we all know it's best if I don't," said Ben, archly. Behind him, there was a loud hum as the engines on the Nu-class transport shuttle blazed into life. The pilot and copilot were in their seats above the ramp and one of the shuttle's crew and passengers had now boarded, with just the ship's engineer, the Rodian, bent over some equipment on the far side of the open loading ramp.
"I have to go," said Ben.
"Well, then thank you, I guess," said the Dhosan, clicking the voice recorder off. "Sure you will not stay? I could get you a spot on the night bulletin!"
"No," said Ben, with a small laugh. "Absolutely not. But thank you, anyway, for coming when I asked. And good luck with your story. I hope many people read it."
He turned towards the shuttle and began to walk. Marcovee called after him.
"Is your name really Ben Waken?"
Ben glanced back. "No," he said.
"What is your name, then?"
Ben smiled. "Goodbye, Marcovee," he said. Then he jogged over to the shuttle and slipped up the ramp while the Rodian's back was turned, and disappeared inside the ship.
The reporter, Marcovee, stood and watched as the engineer finished his repairs, and then the Rodian too went up into the shuttle, none the wiser about the stowaway who had just gone ahead of him. The ramp closed up, and after a few moments waiting for flight clearance, the shuttle rose up into the air. The wings unfolded, the shuttle hovered for a moment, and then the engines burned, and with a whoosh! it flew out into the flight zone in the centre of the port and up into the air above the city. It went up, and up, smaller and smaller, until it shot straight out through the annulus in the ray shield and into the sky beyond.
Marcovee watched the shuttle until it was a tiny speck. Then, the reporter pocketed the voice recorder, turned with a slightly wistful sigh, and walked away towards the spaceport's gates and the City.
From his hiding place just inside the doorway of the storage bay of dock 23, Ben watched the Dhosan leave. From across the room, someone said;
"Well, that was pretty convincing. Might have fooled me too, if I haven't seen some of the stuff you can do."
Ben turned. "Ditto," he said, relieved.
"So how'd you do that?" the Twi'lek asked, sauntering over. He looked different now, not dressed in the stiff greens of his guard's uniform, but a pair of ill-fitting dark trousers and boots under a long tunic and sleeveless vest in dull red, creating a look that was rather less rakish than Ben had expected.
"Misdirection," said Ben. "And I'm very fast on my feet."
"Do you think the reporter bought it?"
Ben frowned. "Oh yes. But whether the readers of the City Star will, I'm not so sure. But perhaps the article will at least serve to muddy the waters a bit. And the more people who believe I've gone, the better. But anyway, I'm glad you made it."
"Your pal, the one with the hair, brought me your note. I spent most of the day hanging around here waiting for you to show up, but I guess until they'll have me back at work there's not much else to do."
"You didn't get fired?" Ben said, anxious.
"No, no," Ditto waved a hand. "I'm on compulsory leave 'till this whole thing is over. I don't mind."
"Good."
"Well, here you go, then," Ditto said, holding out a familiar satchel. "I've got your stuff like you asked. They think you somehow stole it when you busted out of the train, goddess knows how. But Pakat is in the clear, me and Shaarm too. The letter you left worked."
"Good," said Ben again, and he took the bag. He didn't need to look inside to know his lightsaber was there; the crystal chime of its precious core was ringing in his head like a clear bell. He quickly touched the hilt of it, just for reassurance. The rest of his possessions were all intact as far as he could see; his second shirt, creased but clean, a map, datapad, food, the children's painting, a few bits of flimsi...The second lightsaber was missing. But he had thrown that to Shaarm back on the train, she had said they had it safe this whole time. He was glad of that, not only that it wasn't out there somewhere unguarded, but also because it meant the Kheelians had a weapon if they needed it. He hoped they never would.
At the bottom of the bag, something glinted, dully. Someone—Shaarm he imagined—had added a handful of credit chips that certainly hadn't been there before. Ben sighed, and slipped the chips into his pocket. Money was a perilous possession, but right now a necessary one. Ben Waken's Ident card was in there too, for all the good that would do him now. Still, it was a relief to have it all back.
"Where are Shaarm and Pakat?" Ben asked the Twi'lek, as he rummaged in the bag.
"Oh, they're staying somewhere near the Spires," said Ditto. "They're expecting us; I said we would meet them at this park on the campus near the library, we all know the university pretty well, and…" he trailed off, watching in surprise as Ben, a protein bar held in his teeth, unceremoniously stripped off the old, ragged shirt he had been wearing for nearly a week, pulling out the clean one from his satchel.
"Are you okay?" Ditto pointed to the red tarva burn on Ben's forearm.
Ben barely glanced at it. "Yes, quite fine, thank you. It certainly looks worse than it is." He finished redressing between bites of food, and finally swung the familiar weight of the bag onto his shoulder. The 'saber's crystal glowed at his nearness. Everything felt like it was falling back into place, at last. As Ben chewed on the bar, he looked across Bay 23 and the bustle of the spaceport towards the city beyond, shading his eyes with a palm. The distant spires towered up, red and jagged.
"I'm fine," he said again," But I'll be even better when I start getting some answers."
"Then let's go and find some," Ditto said. "Follow me."
TBC