Silent as a maalraas in the jungles of Dxun, Bevel ghosted his way down a narrow aisle formed by two storage racks, cast in the dim indigo light of the force fields that secured the containers. Just meters ahead, two Gran and a few Humanoids loitered near the cargo hold's exit, bickering over something to do with a manifest.
A standard hour earlier, the amateur archcriminal Kolzaar had hastily loaded this ship—the One-Eyed Whiphid, it was called—with his senior minions and whatever ill-gotten goods they could carry, and fled Telthek Nest. Despite having rid himself of two Sith interlopers, he'd been spooked enough to not feel safe in his precious shadowport.
Of course, in reality Bevel and Giran were alive and well, though battered and in poor spirits after narrowly surviving the detonation of their star couriers. Upon discovering the One-Eyed Whiphid in the midst of its hurried evacuation, they had elected to stow aboard rather than assault the vessel in its hangar bay.
As Bevel closed in, a voice in Huttese came from the ship's intercom, announcing the jump to hyperspace as a new rumble overlaid the background noise of the ship.
Unfortunate, he thought. We're running late.
Apparently his partner had similar feelings, or so he guessed when Giran bounded into view from the opposite aisle, bellowing out his wrath as the blood-red glow of his lightsaber tainted the air. Bevel drew his own blade, but the figures about the exit were butchered before he could close in. Not slowing down, the Human savagely turned on the door and chopped it to pieces—unnecessarily, since it hadn't been locked—and stalked down a corridor to the port section of the ship. Bevel went starboard.
The One-Eyed Whiphid was a light freighter, big enough to accommodate twenty-five beings at the most. In spite of his injuries, the Force remained with Bevel, and there was no place to hide from him. He darted from section to section—an engineering station, living quarters, a kitchen, the galley—sparing neither guards nor crewmembers. Gran, Niktos, Humans, Weequays, males and females, his lightsaber made short work of them all. Some surrendered and begged, but he ignored their pathetic spectacles, allowing himself neither to be moved nor to take pleasure in snuffing out their lives.
To be honest, though, he would be vastly relieved when the vessel was quiet again.
From the other side of the ship came Force-tremors from Giran's rage—not to mention a great deal of commotion—as the Human swept through like a hurricane. Bevel had judged him correctly before; his partner belonged on a battlefield among soldiers and war machines, not here on the fringe.
Meeting outside the bridge, they telekinetically ripped the door from its frame and marched inside, wading into a hailstorm of laser fire from a pocket of last-ditch defenders. Their flashing blades scattered bolts in every direction; sparks and flecks of molten metal rained from the ceiling. Bodies fell over consoles, crates, and chairs, riddled and smoking.
"Not gettin' my ship!" shouted a crazed voice over the carnage. Down at the end, Bevel spied an aged Twi'lek with mottled white skin—obviously Kolzaar—turning his blaster pistol on the computers about the pilot station. As electricity erupted from the damage, he turned away just in time for Giran to deflect a pair of stray laser bolts into his shooting arm.
In a few more seconds their resistance was broken, the last of the crew and guards wounded and crawling futilely in the hopes of escape. While Giran went about hacking bodies in two, Bevel strode to the front of the bridge. He found Kolzaar sprawled in the pilot's chair gazing at the ruins of his arm, his face consumed not with pain but with what appeared to be fascination. Narcotics, apparently.
Ignoring him for the moment, Bevel glanced over the computers, which were still spitting sparks and croaking with garbled alarms.
The Twi'lek looked up and cleared his throat. "Governor Jandru send you?"
His executioner raised his eyes to the viewport, which swirled with fierce blue light. "He did not."
"No? Thought this was his way of breaking off our arrangement…"
"It may as well be," said Bevel, facing him.
The lightsaber rose, its glow shining in Kolzaar's eyes, and fear bloomed behind their euphoric glaze, starving and primal. "Hey, hold on now, let's not be hasty," he babbled, raising his good hand before him. "I've got information I could give you. There's caches with merchandise. Other shadowports hidden across the Remnant—I can tell you where they are! Come on, is there nothing I can do for you alive?!"
"No," Bevel explained as his red-white blade bored through the Twi'lek's skull with a hiss.
Having released his pent-up rage in the slaughter, Giran Faselli seemed uncharacteristically serene. For a quarter of an hour he sat cross-legged in the center of the bridge, shrouded by his singed and torn cloak. From his relaxed, contented expression, he could have been a Jedi Knight in deep meditation, and the metal floor strewn with bits of debris, slashed corpses, and discarded blasters and vibroblades might as well have been a pristine, sunlit meadow.
Taking stock of the One-Eyed Whiphid and its current state had been left to Bevel. Just as well, since he didn't mind working alone. From time to time it struck him as strange, considering that relying on teammates had been necessary in his earlier lines of work. Since being awakened to the Force, however, it had progressively become more and more of a burden to tolerate the company of others. A peculiar effect for the Force to have, given it was supposedly the great connector of all life.
As Bevel stepped away from the damaged main console and pocketed his miniature tools, Giran stirred, pulled back his hood, and got to his feet.
"I've rerouted control to the engineering station," Bevel told him, "but there's some damage to the navicomp interface. We won't be able to change course to Torque until I've repaired it."
"Which way are we headed now?" asked Giran.
"Technically the right way—toward Jovan, but it was an emergency jump. We'll drop out of hyperspace in less than an hour."
"How quickly can the navicomp be fixed?"
"That depends on the exact nature of the damage, and if I can find the tools and components I need." Bevel's face hardened before he could stop himself; in an effort to hide it, he went to a back corner of the bridge and opened a supply cabinet he had spied earlier. On the floor in front of it was a severed Gran arm, half-clutching a blaster. "These bodies need jettisoning," he remarked as he kicked it out of the way.
"Hmph. It shouldn't take very long." The Human paused, then spoke again, now urgent and frank. "As soon as we come out of the jump, we should contact the academy on Thule and report back."
"That didn't seem to be a priority on Korphir."
"An infraction, yes, but this mission has grown more complicated since then. Lady Hoctu must be informed. In fact, we should call Torque Highport first and warn them they've been targeted by spies."
Bevel set a tuning stylus atop the cabinet, then a magnaspanner. There were a few spare computer parts here as well, but he'd need to check engineering for more. "That will be difficult," he explained. "The transceiver was damaged too."
"Then fixing that should be our priority."
Bevel half-turned to stare pointedly at the Human. "Which is more important, the navicomp or the transceiver? Or should I fix the former while you…?"
Giran's fists clenched. "I wouldn't be of much use, repairing anything but my own star courier."
"Well, I can manage on this ship, and I say it would be more worth our while to just go to Torque and catch these spies ourselves than to go crying to mother and ask her what to do."
"But we don't know when the spies will get there or exactly what their plan is. We may arrive too early and spook them, or too late to stop them." The Human drew himself up as best he could and raised an accusing finger. "We are in this position because of you—because you couldn't disarm that bomb."
By now, Bevel saw no point in remaining diplomatic, nor did he have the energy to. Clearly, the Force willed conflict. "You wouldn't even have noticed the bomb if not for my seeker droids. And it wasn't my bungling that made us enemies with every being in Telthek Nest!"
For a moment all Giran did was glower at him. Then his jaw unclenched, and Bevel knew he'd scored a point. "We're taking a risk here. Overstepping our bounds." His head tilted in some puzzlement. "You're an Adept, the same as I. Have you never experienced what awaits us when we fail or displease our masters?"
Bevel gave a slight laugh. "Our masters have better things to do than make sure that my leash is tight enough. And so do you."
The Human's eyes narrowed to dark slits, and his next words were weighted with something much heavier than his ordinary petulance. "In case you weren't aware, there is a war on, and our true Master will soon be with us again. And sooner than you think, your insolence is going to get you into trouble."
"We'll see. But in the meantime, there's work to do."
