Chapter 26: Itoll Oc'skar

Coruscant

My life is in chaos, Itoll thought to himself as he chewed a sweetened piece of Mantell Mix. The flakes of popped grain crunched loudly in his mouth, tasting of salt and carmel. It is 2000 hours and I am having Mantell Mix for dinner. There is no way this meets the minimal nutritional needs of a Bothan.

Perched up against the armrest of Jazal's couch, wearing his pajamas, Itoll stared down at his datapad. He scooped up another handful of Mantell Mix and shoving it into his snout. On the screen was a map of Kothlis. Dozens of spots on the planet's surface were blacked out when one zoomed in—Literally redacted.

One of you is where they must do it, Itoll thought, zooming in on a black square. Consciousness transfers… One of you is where some Spynet asshole created Buzz.

Or maybe not… He swiped his furry thumb and index finger together, zooming out to the entire Mid Rim Slice. Maybe they do it closer to Kamino… Or maybe in Separatist space. His eyes were now on a triangle on the Galaxy—One side a line from Kothlis to Kamino, another line from Kamino to Ando. It was almost a perfect right triangle.

He frowned, tan and black fur twitching as he looked at the centre of the triangle—the no-man's land between the westernmost extent of Bothan territory and Separatist space. Leritor… Never heard of that world. Strange... It connects three hyperspace lanes near Bothan space but is largely unheard of…

Suddenly his datapad buzzed.

Scowling at the unrecognised number, Itoll pressed the green answer button. "Hel—?"

"—Is this Itoll Oc'skar?" a young female voice, distinctly Bothan, growled.

"Who is it?" Itoll scowled, worrying that it could be a Spynet trap of some sort.

"I'm Senator Shidar Zhol'skar. Your life is in danger. Meet us—"

"—Senator?!" Itoll snarled, fur swirling with suspicion. With the war going he had been thoroughly out of the loop with politics. An Askar Senator… Did I miss something? "Is this a joke?"

"Nokiz esh a joke," the voice yelped in hilariously thick Askar Creole. "The Fey family esh comin' to kill you! Trajan Kran—"

"—Trajan Kran!" Itoll yelped back. He sat up straight, sending the Mantell Mix spilling out of his bowl, scattering onto his lap, onto the couch, and across floor. "Shtak!" he snarled, looking at the mess.

"Itoll Oc'skar," a male voice yelled in a distinctly Bothawui accent. "This is Senator Polo Se'lab. I have an armoured transport waiting for you on the ground level. Bring only what you can carry—"

—By this point Itoll was no longer paying attention. Carrying his datapad, he could hear the muffled voice of Shidar and Polo murmuring instructions to him, but he had other ideas. Itoll scampered across the kitchen to the safe and typed in the combo "8837." Reaching his hand inside, he grabbed his Galactic Passport, shoving into his cargo pants pocket.

Scowling, he stood still for a moment looking at his Bola carbine. He wanted very much to take that, as it packed more firepower—But bringing it with me down the turbolift would draw attention. And I can pocket my pistol in its holster under my coat. But wait—I can use my speeder!

Itoll turned around, looking to the landing pad jutting off the balcony where his speeder was parked. His fur fell flat.

In the dim twilight, six Bothans dressed in black stood around his speeder. They looked to be a mix of Kothlis and Bothawui Bothans, with a pale white shaggy female who looked like she could be one of Sey'les's friendly polar cousins.

Or not...

Carrying a dagger in one hand, with a blaster rifle strapped to her shoulder, the pale white shaggy Bothan ran her finger over her neck in a threatening motion.

Itoll turned back to the safe, grabbed his blaster pistol, spun around and—

—It was too late. Five of the six Bothans on the landing pad outside the window already had their blasters raised. Itoll started to duck behind the kitchen counter, but they opened fire. The distinctive sound of blaster model Bola carbines came into the apartment, muffled by the transparisteel.

For a moment, Itoll thought he had been shot a dozen times and was merely in shock. Ducked behind the counter, he patted his chest, then realised he had been unscathed.

From the landing pad, angry snarls, furious howls, and banging noises echoed into the room.

Huh… Itoll looked over the counter and saw darkened scorch marks on the transparisteel, but the window was otherwise unscathed. It's blastproof. Jazal bought blastproof windows, those must have cost—SHTAK!

A spotlight from a transport Itoll could not identify shone in brightly from the adjacent window looking out over the B'ankor Refuge.

"Holy shtak! Holy shtak!" Itoll yelped to himself, sprinting across the living room to Jazal's coat hanger. As he grabbed his tan trenchcoat, the gunship opened fire.

Blinding green lights illuminated the room as the shots impacted the transparisteel. The heat came in through the window, as portions of it began glowing red. As Itoll ran up to the front door to escape into the hall, a blast penetrated the window slamming into Jazal's nanowave oven with a terrifying crash.

"Kriff it! Kriff—Whoa…"

Starting from the far left window, a durasteel or perhaps titanium sheet of metal slid over the window from left to right. It continued over the centremost window, blocking the gunship off, and continued to the window in front of the landing pad.

The last Itoll saw of the landing pad was a glimpse of his trusty TW-2 airspeeder and six panicking Bothans yelping as a metal sheet slid over their only view of Itoll Oc'skar and only way into the apartment.

"Jazal… Holy shtak you spent a kriff-ton of money," he whispered to himself, shaking his head as he finally stepped outside into the hall.

Security alarms now blared loudly. From a few apartments, he could hear the panicked yells of residents, some of whom sounded like they were on the line with the Coruscant police.

He quickly holstered his blaster pistol under his trench coat, running as fast as he could to the turbolift. "MY DROID!" he gasped, suddenly thinking of his fur-cutting droid FR-923. She might give those criminals information on me… They might—Oh wait… She's at Fojo's parent's house. He continued running, deciding to deal with that problem later.

o.o.o.o.o

Every time the turbolift stopped at a floor, Itoll cautiously reached his hand into his coat, gripping his blaster. But no one bothered him on his ride down. By the time the turbolift reached "G" Itoll shared space with two humans, a Pantoran, and a Whiphid.

As the doors slid open, Itoll retreated to the back corner, surreptitiously drawing his blaster. The other occupants took no notice and strolled onto the Phare Mall's promenade. The smell of other Bothans drew nearer and nearer.

Itoll raised his blaster pointing out the door as he peered around the corner, and aimed it right into the face of a young female with jet black fur, who yelped.

Six blue uniformed Bothan Marshals raised their Bola carbines, several yelling "FREEZE!"

Sighing, Itoll lowered his blaster and stepped out of the turbolift. Lucky none of them shot first.

"Itoll Oc'skar?" asked a blonde-furred Bothan with long whiskers.

"Yeah," Itoll panted, recognising this Bothan as he shook his hand. "Polo Se'lab? Senator Polo Se'lab?"

"Shidar Zhol'skar," the jet black-furred Bothan said professionally, taking Itoll's hand once Polo was done.

Itoll blinked, staring somewhat surprised into her violet eyes which were very atypical for an Askar. She looks fifteen.

"And I am Major Nial Bwo'ril," exclaimed one of the Marshals, a red and white furred female exclaimed. Her helmet slid to the left on her head as she spoke. "This is Sergeant Kij Lo'kan, Sergeant Mil—"

"—Nice to meet you, Major," Itoll interrupted, "but we really need to move. Whoever is after me has a gunship and the ability to deploy assassins from it. I thought I was meeting you outside."

"A gunship?!" Nial gasped. "This changes things."

"Our transport is just outside," Polo growled, turning around and taking a step around the corner. "It will just be a ten minute ride to the embassy where—"

—A blur caught Itoll's attention. Up ahead, a red-furred Bothan in a black trench, looking comically like a villain in a HoloFilm, peered out into the hall from an alcove. The low rumble of dozens of slugs coughed out in Itoll's direction; whatever weapon that hostile was holding fired so fast that it was impossible to hear distinct shots.

Several voices cried out at once as Itoll dropped for cover. Two humans towards the end of the hall screamed, disappearing around the corner as they fled.

Up ahead, at the front of the group Bothans, Polo Se'lab—Senator Polo Se'lab—yelped as a red exit wound bloomed, bursting out of his shoulder blade. The Marshal standing to the Senator's right dropped to the ground, a burst of red emitting his head as he fell alongside the Senator.

Before Itoll could return fire, the offending Bothan ducked back around the corner.

"OFFICER DOWN!" several voices yelped.

"He's right around the corner! Ten o'clock," Itoll snarled, crouching as he walked up to Polo Se'lab.

"COVERING FIRE!" one of the Marshals yelped. Fur flat, he suddenly began firing Bola carbine bursts at the chunk of wall where the offending Bothan had been.

Itoll cringed as chunks of wall bounced off his snout, blasts sailing by just a meter away. "HOLD YOUR FIRE YOU KRIFFING IDIOT!" He holstered his blaster and began dragging Polo back towards Shidar and the remaining five Marshals, groaning in exasperation and exhaustion.

"I've been shot!" Polo yelped suddenly, pressing his hand up to his shoulder then holding it in front of his snout in horror. Red blood always was much more dramatic-looking on white or blonde fur.

"You're gonna be fine," Itoll panted. Fur twitching with annoyance, he opened his snout to ask for help then closed it.

A cream furred Marshal rushed forward, applying a thick piece of gauze to Polo's wound. Shidar crouched down, replacing Itoll at Polo's side.

"We need to get out of here!" Itoll snarled, jumping to his feet to face the Major. "They are delaying us, pinning us down here till their backup comes. They have a gunship and probably dozens more."

"Holy shtak... Holy shtak!" Nial yelped into her comm. "We have an officer down in Phare mall. Senator Polo Se is injured. I say again, Polo Se is injured. Requesting backup—"

"—WE NEED TO MOVE!" Itoll yelped, growing completely incensed with how slow these Marshals were to react. Miralo was better than this!

"Behind us!" one of the Marshals gasped, aiming his Bola carbine back towards the turbolift. "My twelve o—"

—A hot fiery blast glowed on the Marshal's chest. A wave of blasts and slugs flew into their direction as Itoll crouched around the corner.

Nial staggered, nearly tripping over her own feet as she retreated down the hall.

Itoll returned fire, leaning around the corner. He heard one of the Bothans standing near the turbolift the other group—in the group of Bothan shooting at them—gasp "Erz za pan Polo Se'lab!" ["It's Polo Se'lab!"]

"Gin-sisa woks sa zharn vovoyar!" ["Stop firing!"] yelped another Bothan in their group. "Gin-sisa woks—"

—Itoll gasped in horror as the plasma blast emitting from his pistol continued towards the turbolift. Within a second, it hit one of the Bothans—the Bothan who was telling his side to stop firing—in the head. A steamy cloud of smoke poofed into the air where that Bothan's head once was.

"Kriff it!" Itoll snarled aloud, retreating around the corner fully. A burst of blaster fire slammed into the wall, punching through the corner where he had been standing a second ago. "KRIFF EVERYTHING!"

"Itoll Oc'skar!" a deep voice snarled from somewhere around the corner—Somewhere near the turbolift. "Surrender yourself and we won't harm your friends."

"YOU KRIFF-HEADS SHOT A BOTHAN SENATOR!" Itoll snarled back. "THE BOTHAN GOVERNMENT WILL HUNT YOU DOWN TO THE ENDS OF THE GALAXY!"

Polo Se'lab was now seated up against the wall, beginning to tremble as he went into shock.

Sighing, Itoll looked back up the hallway. Somewhere up ahead was a gunman, perhaps more, waiting for him.

The turbolife was clearly not an option. With a frown, looked across the hall, towards a closed restaurant. The kitchen door looks like it might go somewhere.

"I got a message for you," Shidar whisper-yelled, shoving her datapad under his snout.

"ГИН—ЕВАКЮЎА ЎОКС ОД КОРН Б'АНКОРИСК РЕФЮДЖ." ["EVACUATE FROM THE B'ANKOR REFUGE."]

"He's not going to make it," Nial gulped, looking down at Polo. "Is he?"

"He needs to get a blood transfusion now," the medic growled, shaking his head.

"ITOLL OC'SKAR! I GIVE YOU THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE I COME AROUND THE CORNER AND BLAST YOU!"

That's it. "It was nice meeting you senators," Itoll sighed.

"You can't surrender to them," Shidar gulped. "You can't be thinking of—"

"—Not the idea," Itoll snarled, aiming his blaster at the window of the restaurant directly across the hall. "Don't follow me."

Shidar nodded in acknowledgment, fur swirling nervously. "Take my datapad. Our government can track it."

"I don't need the whole datapad," Itoll muttered, taking it from her. He pressed the card slot on the side, removed the HoloCard, then gave the Senator the rest of her datapad back.

She frowned, looking at the screen which now showed it lacked a HoloNet connection.

"Just get a new HoloCard kid," Itoll growled wryly, then squeezed the trigger sending a red blast into the window of the closed restaurant.

Yelps and snarls emitted from around the corner by the turbolift. "HE'S GETTING AWAY!"

Ignoring them, Itoll sprinted as fast as he could, jumping over the remains of the shattered windowpane. A hail of slugs and blasts once again went off, this time smashing the other windows behind and impacting the empty chairs and tables all around him.

He continued running through the restaurant, pushing open the swinging plastic doors to the kitchen, gasping at the pitch blackness. Kriff I should have brought a glowrod—Oh yeah.

Seeing the dimly glowing outline of a door ten meters away, Itoll ran blind through the pitch black kitchen, slamming into the door with an loud "ooof."

"KRIFF IT!" He yelped, swearing aloud once again as he blasted the doorhandle, then pushed it open into the blinding interior lighting of the other side of the mall. After a cautious glance both directions, Itoll ran past where Travi's Mygeeto Burrito shop used to be, pocketting his blaster as he ran out into the chilly outdoors.

o.o.o.o.o

The lack of real police—real Coruscant Guards or else civilian Coruscant police was suddenly quite disturbing to Itoll. From the perspective of the police, a group of Bothans had just engaged each other in a firefight at Phare Mall after a gunship had shot at an apartment.

No time to worry about the lack of police now, Itoll thought to himself, jogging around the bloc through the darkness. He passed a group of worried looking Grans, one of whom was speaking into his wrist-comm, listing off details to a police operator.

The street became darker and darker as Itoll approached the checkpoint to the B'ankor Refuge. Itoll had visited the refuge a few times. On a particularly unpleasant occasion once he, Wulf, and Sey'les had ventured into the refuge when it was pouring down rain to help some Lurmen who had been forcibly relocated within the walls.

The B'ankor Refuge was certainly the most peculiar place on Coruscant's surface. A long strip of grassland and villages two kilometres wide and many kilometres long, it was the home to 10,000 B'ankora—a species of herbivorous wooly ruminant sentients who had been relocated to Coruscant after a cataclysm on their homeworld. They wore plaid outfits and mostly had an agrarian and simple existence.

And a dark-at-night existence, Itoll thought incredulously as he peered through the closed gate. In the daytime, just beyond the gate there was an escalator, with the rolling green hills visible below. But now it was pitch black. How Quaint.

Not a single light was on in the pitch black grassy fields below.

Itoll put one of his boots into the bars of the gate, then stepped up. When he reached the top, his fur fell flat. A spotlight was shining down on him.

Well that's where the gunship went, Itoll thought grimly. He sat on top of the gate, braced to jump—

—Itoll yelped as a loud explosion went off beneath him. He fell through the hot air, landing on a pile of metal from the gate which had shattered under the laser fire from the gunship. Unable to do anything else, Itoll ran down the escalator into the darkness.

He knew it was hopeless. If the gunship saw him well enough to shoot at him on the fence, they were certainly using infrared. But he kept running, hearing the loud rumble of the gunship's engines and the echoing metal of the escalator thudding with each stem.

A bright light flashed through the sky and his fur fell flat. I am dead. What a stupid way to go. Killed by my own people outside Jazal's apartment in the kriffing B'ankor Refuge. The B'ankor Refuge.

But an explosion thundered from above, followed by red and blue strobe lights.

Itoll looked up. Howling overhead, a pair of Coruscant police speeders had opened fire on the mysterious gunship, which was now falling into the Refuge, ablaze. After three seconds, it slammed into a hill, flashing brightly as it exploded.

Snout hanging open, Itoll's fur twirled with guilt as he walked down the escalator. I hope that ship didn't hit a house… One thing at a time.

When he reached the bottom stepping onto soft grass, the police cruisers continued flying on. Well, they weren't my ride then. Itoll looked around but only could see the dim lights of speeder traffic, as well as the skyscrapers all around, towering over the refuge walls in the distance. But a high pitched whistling noise screeched through the sky.

Ears perked up, Itoll looked straight up. A red flare of some sorts was dropping rapidly through the clouds. For a wild moment, Itoll worried the flare might land on him, but instead it bounced on the grass ten meters or so away.

Trotting over to the flare, Itoll sniffed the air curiously. He picked up the general smells of the city, and the burning wreckage of the crashed transport a few hundred meters away but nothing more. What is going on? Okay… So I stand here.

He looked behind, back to the wall, nothing. Similarly, looking to his left, then his right, he saw nothing. But he could hear the low hum of an engine of some sorts. Looking back to his front, he saw a fighter-sized craft with a pair of distant headlights, and a few red wing lights. Huh. That makes no—Shtak.

Tearing through the grass up ahead, a bulky net approached quickly, barely visible in the darkness. The net was coming as quickly as the fighter that was pulling it. There was barely time for Itoll to yelp before the net slammed into him.

Itoll heard a wet sound as his nose was compacted, the taste of blood filling his mouth. Likewise, his right arm bent forcefully and his fingers seized up as they jammed from the impact. For a few seconds, the intense G-Forces of the sudden acceleration forced him further into the canvas, Itoll barely managing to whimper in pain in his dazed state.

Then, thankfully, the sudden sense of acceleration faded. Itoll sunk to the bottom of the net as gravity caught back up, now moving at roughly the same speed as the starfighter that had rescued him.

"You're supposed to face away from the net!" a Bothan voice growled from the loudspeakers under the fighter craft.

Looking up through criss-cross mesh, Itoll could now clearly make out the fighter model. A Y-Wing. "You asshole," he snarled, spitting out a wad of blood. "I could have died!" He knew his protests were in vain though. There was no way the pilot could hear him through the wind.

The bomb bay doors above shuttered. The black fabric affixing the net to the Y-Wing slowly retracted, pulling Itoll up into the craft.

Shtak! Am I going to be flown all the way to Bothawui in the bomb bay of a Y-Wing?

o.o.o.o.o

"He could have died!" Gavin Azi'skar's furious Holopresence snarled.

"I am all right," Itoll mumbled. Tissue paper was now plugging each of his nostrils as he held his snout up. Besides needing his arm to be popped back into socket and some broken cartilage in his nose, Itoll was fine.

Much to his surprise, his rescuers were not from Bothawui, but from the Spacer Coalition. After being dragged up into a Y-Wing using what Itoll felt must be the most inglorious transportation method in the known universe, Itoll was ferried aboard the Kowalzok and rushed to sickbay. For the first time in years, he was amongst his own people.

"I don't understand," Itoll mumbled to a Botha'ahir Marine, standing guard at the door. "Why am I here?" he growled, turning back to Gavin Azi'skar's holopresence. "Why did I need to be rescued? The kriff does Trajan Kran have to do with it? Why did two Senators risk their lives—One maybe died… Why?!"

"I am glad you are all right, but you have not thanked me once!" Gavin growled wryly.

Itoll frowned, completely unamused. "Why did my life have to be turned upside down? What is going on?"

"There will be time perhaps," Azi'skar muttered thoughtfully. "At the moment, you are not clear to know. Just know that your life is in danger. You talked too much about Spynet business you should not have known about."

Then it wasn't Trajan… Itoll gasped to himself in sudden realisation. Sey'les! She's in worse danger than me.