Chapter 9: Rand
Marina's eyes shot open. She was surrounded by droids looming over her, all . . . all shut down. Her panicked breathing eased and her heart rate started to drop back closer to a normal range as she thought back over what had happened. She'd been hit! But . . . the skin on her thigh was whole, bearing only a faint trace of a burn. Not only that, but she felt . . . well, not good, but definitely better. But how? And what happened to the droids? Her head dropped back down to the deck and she stared up at the drab duracrete-gray ceiling.
Oh no. There was only one thing she knew of that could heal injuries that quickly – the same Jedi technique Kreia claimed to have used. And the button, how had she chosen it? The override, of all the other buttons . . .was it brighter than the rest? Or had it been something else? This brought her to the question she least wanted to face – was she so enmeshed in the force that she was using it without conscious thought? Marina shook her head and told herself it was not a rhetorical question – I still have a choice.
She had to get away from here, away from all of it. It was overwhelming, frightening, and worst of all, tempting. A part of her, a weak part, desperately wanted to go back, to embrace the Force, to pick up again the life she'd spent so long and worked so hard to leave behind.
Either way, the longer she stuck around here the less likely she'd live long enough for it to become an issue. Just move, come on Marina, get up. Let's go.
Marina climbed to her feet and took stock of her position. The physical work of checking her torn undergarments, reclaiming her weapons, and taking in her immediate surroundings, of just doing something, was calming. She let out a long, slow breath. Okay. All of this business with the Force she'd deal with later. It wasn't like she could escape it with that damn woman popping into her skull every few minutes. Okay, plan of action. Deal with the situation now, including putting up with Kreia. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the thought, but Jedi were useful in life-or-death situations. Then, as soon as she got clear of this place, she was gone.
Okay, good. Now, to the tried and true keep-Marina-alive plan. Find out what was going on. Get weapons. Get out. Alright.
She turned to the administration console. The droids had done some pretty significant damage, but it seemed at least somewhat functional. Fortunately the chair was still intact and she sat down and toggled the system. In a stroke of good luck, the override wasn't a built-in function, it was actually a back-door into the system, so she was logged in with the administrator's clearance level.
She first performed a system check. Blinking red warning signs notified her that all the droids on her level were shut down. Thank goodness; she was safe for the moment. Now, if anyone had an idea about what had happened, it would be the administrator; the prisoner could wait. A moment later she found the corporate report logs and selected the log from three days ago. Just as with Latisha's logs, the files were corrupted, though whether by the virus or the physical damage to the console, or both, she didn't know.
She hit the play button and the ghostly holographic image of the administrator appeared before her. The dark-skinned man sported a thin mustache and graying hair, surprising for one who looked to be on the near side of forty. The volume faded in and out as he spoke in broken bits of static.
:: . . . traced the freighter in . . . it was lucky it wasn't destroyed when it drifted into the asteroid field. Not much on board . . . damaged droid, annoying protocol droid, and . . . lot of bodies . . . Sent the survivor to medical, and the others to the morgue. The computer didn't recognize the ship's ID code, so we transmitted . . . Republic for some answers . . . the protocol droid about what happened. Says its master, the survivor, I guess, was on . . . Republic cruiser Harbinger when it suffered an engine failure . . . says the woman was a Jedi. If so, that's going to mean tr-::
Marina cursed and thumped a fist against the wounded console. It wasn't the old woman they were after, it was her. That droid was the cause of all this. But how had it found out? Damn those politicians, they'd promised nobody would know. They must have let it leak somehow. She hit the next log. The administrator was definitely worried – she could see stress lines etched into his face.
Log 253-14
:: . . . inventoried the bodies and cargo; everything matches the protocol droid's story. The T3 droid had seized up . . . storage suck on standby mode. Don't know what code will activate it – it could be it's voice activated for all we know. . . We put the protocol droid to work in maintenance, sorting the mining droid comm routines an updating their recognition sensors . . . and to shut him up. When the survivor recovers hopefully we can get them both off the station before there's a ri-::
Alarm bells. All the problems with the mining droids revolved around the recognition software, and all the droids had been gathered in one place with a protocol droid constantly harping on about Jedi. The maintenance officer was starting to look mighty dirty. She called the final entry, yesterday's, braced herself, and hit play.
The administrator was definitely the worse for the wear. The worry lines had grown deeper, and he now sported puffy bags under blood-shot eyes.
Log 253-15
:: . . . trouble between the work shifts. Word of the Jedi leaked out and the miners aren't sure what to do with her. Coorta's mining crew wanted us to collect the credits for the bounty on the Jedi but . . . contacting Telos to get the Republic records on the Jedi, but nobody w- . . . still no word from the Republic, but I've sent out a broad co transmission for all records on this Ebon Hawk. One of the minors said . . . smuggling vessel . . . mining accidents making the miners restless. The droid behavior cores must be going . . . foolish talk of Jedi witchcraft causing the problems . . . two miners were drilled by a mining droid's laser, and those blasts in the ventilation tunnels nearly caused the whole facility to blow.::
Marina leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable swivel chair and steepled her fingers thoughtfully. The log was . . . disconcerting, to put it mildly, and raised a lot more questions than it answered. Why wasn't the Republic responding? And what was this nonsense about a bounty on Jedi? The Council was insanely reticent to do anything, but even they wouldn't stand for a bounty on members of the order. Well, that wouldn't last long, though she'd keep an eye out for this Coorta. Of more immediate concern were these tunnel blasts. Were they intentional? A controlled escalation from the earlier blasts? Or were they the result of so many dead miners and the droid's killing people instead of fixing things?
She frowned, idly spinning the chair back and forth with her toes. Either way, it didn't change things. She needed to get out of here as quickly as possible, which meant getting to a ship, which meant finding out why the emergency turbolift to the hangar was down and how to fix it. The logs hadn't helped and their network was so corrupt it was probably a waste of time to start logging on to random terminals. It was time to find someone to talk to, and preferably someone that wasn't a prisoner.
A few keystrokes later and Marina was in the coms subsystems. She was picking up a lot of silence. It wasn't the static of jamming. There was just . . . nothing. She switched to a broadband search, but still, there was silence, and Marina felt a chill run through her. She was alone.
Wait . . .
Marina leaned forward, her eyes narrowing in concentration. There was something, a signal, but it was very faint and not on any of the programmed channels. The signal was too weak to pick up anything solid, but it was something.
She pulled up the camera monitoring system. If she couldn't talk to them, maybe she could find them and work her way over to them. The situation was desperate enough that they'd be willing to work with her instead of getting hung up on claiming she was a Jedi and trying to sell her. Unfortunately, and almost inevitably at this point, the system was in bad shape. Just as at the security station most of the cameras were offline and the system was completely severed from the other side of the facility. What she did see wasn't much better.
The images popped up quickly as she flipped through the remaining camera feeds. Mutilated corpses in a hallway. Blood splatters across bulkheads. Breached vac suits slowly spinning through space outside shattered viewports. The converted morgue popped up showing Kreia meditating in the classic lotus position of the Jedi, surrounded by bodies. Marina skipped past that one quickly.
She felt her hope dwindle as she flipped through the last few cameras, but she paused on the last feed. It was that same makeshift jail cell, which still struck her as a little bizarre on a company mining station. Wouldn't they just fire any troublemakers and ship them out?
Where was this? She pulled up the map and compared it to the vid feed. It looked like . . . storage room B, just down the hall here on the administration deck. Perfect. Time for some answers.
Atton Rand glanced over casually as the storage room door opened and tried to act like he hadn't spent the last few hours straining to hear sounds in the distance he was half-convinced were figments of his imagination. He couldn't let them know the isolation was getting to him. Because it wasn't getting to him, not at all.
All pretense at non-nonchalance went out the proverbial airlock as he caught sight of his visitor. She was wearing only underwear (if disappointingly chaste), she was definitely a woman, and he didn't recognize her, which details he made out precisely in that order as his eyes traveled up her body. Something tugged at the back of his mind, not familiarity, it was something else, almost a gut reaction. Whatever it was, it made him uncomfortable, and his defenses slid into place in an instant.
…
Marina's eyes narrowed as she saw the man's slippery gaze.
"Nice outfit. You miners change regulation uniforms while I've been in here?"
Marina suppressed a sigh. He fit just about every stereotype of an outer rim thug. His brown hair was disheveled and greasy, his thick jacket opened to reveal a stained white shirt, his pants were threadbare, and his boots were worn and scuffed. The man wasn't much better than his clothes. His eyes still rested well below her own, and he wasn't just looking, he was ogling like a true, uneducated, backwater yokel. She'd seen his type before – her best bet was to ignore his idiocy, get what she needed, and get out.
"Who are you?"
"Atton, Atton Rand." He met her eyes for a moment with a sardonic smile, then dropped his eyes to the floor as he leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs. "Excuse me if I don't shake hands, the field only causes mild electrical burns."
Marina stepped closer to the force cage. "Uh huh. Care to explain why you're locked up in here?"
Atton shrugged. He glanced up at her but avoided her eyes, before letting them slide back down her body again. "Security claimed I violated some trumped-up violation or other – take it up with them if you want, but they stopped listening to me shortly before they stopped feeding me. Now that's criminal."
Marina found his pity plea a lot less effective while he was to ogling her. "Hey, my eyes are up here. What is this place?"
Atton grudgingly met her eyes, but made her pay for it with sarcasm. "You mean you didn't come here on purpose?"
"I'm asking the questions here."
Atton held up his hands in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. I'm the one in the cage, I get it. Well, this little slice of paradise is the Peragus Mining Facility, the only supplier of shipping grade fuel in this corner of the galaxy. Peragus fuel plays havoc with engines, but it gets the job done . . ." he shrugged, "as long as you don't mine the toxic by-products and trying to mine it without getting yourself blown up."
"Blowing yourself up?" The administrator had mentioned that, but as she'd long since learned, the grunts on the ground had a much better practical knowledge of things than any administrator.
"Yeah – this asteroid belt is one giant minefield. One proton torpedo or even a stray blaster shot can start an explosion that'll make the one that shattered Peragus II look like a kid's pop detonator. That's why they don't allow blasters here. Can't trust a miner jumped up on juma juice not to fire one stray shot that will turn the entire colony into a thermal detonator."
Marina crossed her arms. "You talk about the miners like you're not one of them."
Atton paused for a moment. "Yeah, of course I'm a miner. Who else would come out this far, anyways? Especially, say, someone not knowing where they were, wearing only their underwear?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and glanced back down before Marina's glare brought his eyes back up to meet her own.
"Fine. Just tell me what happened out here."
"Sure, I'll tell you everything I know . . . as soon as you let me out of this cage."
Marina shook her head. "No way. How do I know this wasn't your doing?" She felt a twinge of guilt assuming like that, having been in jail recently herself, but there was too much she didn't know without just throwing in complete unknowns like this clown.
But that was only half the reason. The other half was to see how he reacted. He kept his cool remarkably well, but Marina had a lot of experience dealing with people under pressure. The slight tensing of muscles, the hint of dilation in the pupils . . . he was a cool customer, but he was afraid. He was either guilty, or he knew something about what was going on, or both.
…
Atton was terrified, but he kept his face blank. Keep it cool, Atton, keep it cool. It wasn't the thought of being left in jail that rattled him. Oh it was scary, alright, especially because something was obviously very wrong around here, but nothing he hadn't dealt with before. There was something worse.
He had a hunch.
Atton hated hunches. But his had a maddening habit of being right, and right now he was having a big one that he needed to get out of his cage, and get out right now. He thought frantically through his options, and there wasn't much. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures; it was time to tell the truth. Well, some of the truth; he wasn't that desperate.
Yet.
…
She could see it in his eyes; the pressure was getting to him.
Marina kept up her steady gaze and resisted the urge to shake her head. She had him pegged now. He wasn't one of the honest, intelligent-but-undereducated outer-rimmers she'd come to respect. No, he was the rimmer that was intimidated by the rest of the galaxy and buried it beneath smooth talk and bluster, but collapsed when the pressure was on. And he was just . . . about . . . ready . . .
"Look, if it was me, either I'd be free or things would be back to normal after they caught me, right?" His smug attitude was gone now; a hint of desperation was starting to creep in.
Not buying, hutt slime. Come on, out with it.
Atton sighed and looked down in defeat. "Alright, look. I'll tell you what I know, some of what I know, but then you have to let me out."
"I'll think about it."
The man raised his head, eyes wide, and she noticed for the first time that they were bloodshot around the edges. "You have to! I can help you. I can! Something's obviously gone wrong, and I've gotten out of trouble countless times."
"Just answer my questions."
Atton grimace. "Doesn't look like I have much of a choice now, do I? Shoot."
"There are bodies and crazy droids all over the place. What the hell happened?"
…
Atton fought the urge grimace. Well, the straight play hadn't worked, so it was time to push a little bit. He had a suspicion, a worrying suspicion. "You mean before or after that Jedi showed up?" He glanced up at her on the word Jedi and saw her jaw clench and her eyes tighten in a suppressed wince.
Damn.
Cut the sob story and get out, then get very, very far away. Atton's thoughts scrambled to come up with a play. Hmm. Jedi avoided attention these days so . . . it wasn't much, but he was all out of stalling time.
"Either way, it's a real short story. You see, this Jedi shows up, and you know what that means. Where there's one Jedi the Republic will soon be crawling up your ion engine in no time. But the story gets better; see, some miners get it into their ferrocrete skulls that since the Jedi is unconscious, they can collect on the bounty the exchange has posted on Jedi. Well, what passes for the law here didn't like that idea, so the two groups started fighting. Then there was a big explosion, I was sitting here for a long time, then you showed up in your underwear and things got a lot better."
The woman's arms had gone from crossed in front of her to wrapped around herself by the end of his shpiel. Not his best work, and he was banking hard on her not wanting to catch the Republic's eye, but he didn't need a perfect score here, he just couldn't bust. It was pretty straightforward - It's not safe to stay here, and if you hang around the Republic will show up. So get me out of here so I can get us out of here.
"And what side are you on, Atton?"
He froze, clenched up like a fresh-faced rookie on his first day of interrogation training, but he couldn't help it. The question cut through him like a max-setting vibroblade.
…
Atton took a long time to answer, at least by his standards; almost two seconds had passed by the time he made any response. That was a warning flag, and she tried to focus, tried to ignore the returning guilt. How many more were dead now because of her? Focus Marina, come on.
"I . . . I'm on my side. I just want to get off this rock and start over somewhere else. I don't want anything to do with the Jedi."
There was more to it than that, Marina could tell, but it didn't matter, at least not for the moment. Focus on the first problem first.
"Fair enough, Atton. Tell me your plan, and if it sounds alright, I'll let you out."
He tried to hide it, but she could see the relief in his eyes. "Deal." His voice lost the hint of pleading and became suddenly businesslike, competent. Designed to instill confidence. Marina frowned at that.
"Alright, so this isn't a military installation, which means we have a chance. You get me out of here and I can break into the admin console. From there I can reroute the emergency systems so we can get to the hangar. We grab one of the company shuttles and get out of here."
Marina considered. She was a very long way from trusting him, that was certain, but having someone else around would make things easier, especially if he was as good at slicing as he claimed. Plus, she couldn't quite shake the thought of him stuck in there, helpless, starving to death.
"Alright, but I'm watching you. Let's go."
Atton didn't quite gasp in relief as the force cage shimmered and died around him, but it was close. Instead he walked with the pent-up energy of a caged man towards the rest of the admin deck while Marina brought up the rear, keeping a close eye on him.
He only hesitated a moment taking in the chaos of bodies and twisted metal scattered across the main deck before going straight to the admin console. Clearly not his first time seeing combat. Yes this was the outer rim, but would even the miners be this familiar with violence?
Atton wasted no time getting to work on the console. "Wow, what did you do to this thing?"
Marina shrugged, though he couldn't see her looking over his shoulder. "It's not my fault, the droids shot it up when they tried to kill me."
He frowned. "The droid's tried to kill you?" He shrugged. "Figures. Well, at least it's still functioning. Nice job getting access, by the way. It's a pain in the neck trying to bounce the signal from the automated hail back and ride the signal through the firewalls. Did you find a backdoor or . . . hey!"
"What? What happened?"
Atton swore and gave the console a kick. "Somebody just severed this console from the main hub by remote and locked it down. And this wasn't some automated program that bootstrapped its way in when I logged in, there's someone on the other end of that."
That was way against any sort of emergency protocols Marina had ever heard of. Her jaw tightened and she resisted the urge to start pointing her mining laser at Atton. If anything, this cleared him of suspicion . . . unless he's an accomplice that got burned. She shook her head. Don't get paranoid now. This is a small installation, if they were good, one is all that it would take. Plus, why would an accomplice imprison him instead of killing him?
…
Atton was on the edge of becoming seriously concerned. Bodies, malfunctioning droids, you'd seen them once you'd seen them a thousand times. But this was no accident . . .
"Someone just locked this whole level down tight and left us here . . . trapped. Someone is trying to kill us."
He turned to face the half-naked woman behind him, and suppressed the urge to swear again as his suspicions were confirmed. She looked tired and worried, but not surprised.
"You knew about this, didn't you?"
She spluttered something noncommittal about not knowing the specifics but he waved her off with a grimace and turned back to the console. Dammit, you never, ever trust one of her kind, he knew that. They always held back, they never played on the level with you even when it was your life on the line. He knew that . . . so why had it caught him by surprise when she was just like the rest?
…
". . . I didn't even know if they were still alive and you knew as much about the fight here as . . ." but he'd already turned away and was studiously ignoring her. Damn rimmer, always jumping to conclusions, just like all the others. So why was she surprised when he did the same?
"Look, someone tried to kill me while I was stuck in a Kolto tank, and now the droids are trying to kill me. That's all I know. Happy now?"
He grunted.
She sighed. "Is there anything we can still do with this console?"
Atton shrugged as he dusted off the command chair and settled in, lifting his boots onto the damaged console. His flash of anger was gone as quickly as it had come, swallowed up inside him somewhere.
"I doubt it. All we have is communications back, for all the good trying to shout into a vacuum will do you."
"Well, we know someone is alive out there, maybe there are other trapped miners we could reach." It was a stretch, but maybe she could localize that faint signal she'd heard earlier.
Atton crossed his arms behind his head. "You could try. On the other hand, the miners have trapped you on this level and are probably trying to kill us, so why not call them up for a chat?"
Marina eyed Atton speculatively. "And why would the miners be trying to kill us? Aren't they going for the Jedi?"
Atton rolled his eyes. "Don't play dumb, sister. Only one kind of person stumbles into a dangerous situation ass backwards and tries to play it like she knows better than everyone else. A blind mynock with a crippled wing could see you're the Jedi that's got everyone running around like their heads are cut off. So just drop the act."
Anger flared through her. How dare that backwards prick think he knew her? She kicked the chair, spinning him around to face her and dropping Atton's boots to the deck with a painful thump. She punctuated each word with a forceful prod of her index finger into his collarbone. "I. Am. Not. A. Jedi!"
An equally hot anger flowed into Atton's eyes, but only for an instant. Then it was gone, the mask back in place. "Have it your way then. You're just a helpless little princess trapped on a space station and everyone is trying to kill you for no reason. Feel better now?"
"Just shut up." This was not a fight worth having right now, especially not with him. She stepped up to the console and toggled over to communications. Okay, think.
There was no signal at all from the other half of the station, which meant either their receivers were completely down, or this hunk of junk relied on old-fashioned, cheaper wired coms and they were out. Her money was on the latter. Still, there was the hangar . . . there were no life signs down there, which was why she hadn't bothered with it last time, but what did she have to lose? On the third attempt she heard the ping of an answered call from the hangar and had to take a deep breath to hold in the whoop of triumph and relief.
"Hello? Can you hear me?"
The only response was the electronic warble of an astromech droid. Well, it was better than nothing. Behind her Atton leaned in, his interest renewed.
"Are you operational?"
The droid tweeted an affirmative.
"Great. We're stuck on the administration deck in lockdown. Can you get the turbolifts working?"
The droid warbled a slow negative.
Marina grunted. "There must be an emergency hatch or something. There's got to be some way off this level."
The droid replied in a much longer string of digital code and Marina glanced down at the display for the translation – it had been a while since she'd had a conversation in droidspeak. What the little machine suggested was crazy, but . . . "I'd rather risk it than just sit here waiting to die. Do it."
The connection died.
"What was that?"
Marina sighed and searched through the rubble for another chair before answering. "A droid." Hmm, it wasn't in that bad a shape. She pulled it over to the command console and leaned her plasma cutter up against it before settling down as comfortably as she could, and turning to face the incredulous Rand.
"Really?"
No lack of sarcasm there. She placed her mining laser carefully on the console within easy reach, but well away from Mr. Rand over there.
Well, if she was stuck with him, she was stuck with him.
"Alright, fine. It was a droid, an astromech from the sound of it."
"And . . ."
She rolled her eyes. "And I asked it to open the emergency hatch to the mining tunnels."
Atton rocked back into his chair. "Wait wait wait, you're not planning to go down there, are you? The explosion I heard came from down there – there's probably nothing there but superheated rock and collapsed blast tunnels . . . you'd be an idiot to go down there."
Marina shrugged. "Or desperate."
Atton opened his mouth to argue then shut it. "Or desperate," he conceded.
Look at that, we can agree on something after all.
Time passed slowly as they sat there, each silently hoping for a response from the little droid.
The silence brought back memories. Bad memories. But with the console shot, her only option for distraction was this lug here. Still . . . even he was better than the alternative.
"So, what's the miners' problem with Jedi?"
Atton put on an insufferably smug look. "What do you care? You're not a Jedi."
Marina shot him another glare. "I care about why people are trying to kill me, no matter how stupid their reasons might be."
He put his hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, fine, take it easy. They probably don't have anything against yo- er, against Jedi personally." He winked at her as she rolled her eyes at his 'accidental' slip of the tongue, more than a little thrown off by his rapidly shifting moods.
"Things have been pretty bad out here for the last few years. No ships means nobody buys fuel, no sales means layoffs and pay cuts, and eventually people get desperate enough to try something crazy. Normal people gotta eat, have to survive day to day, something those schutta Jedi never did understand."
Marina's hand started to drift towards her mining laser. "And how about you?"
He glanced pointedly at her weapon before leaning back and putting his feet up on the console again. "Not that desperate. I want nothing to do with Jedi, and if you're smart, neither will you. It seems like everyone is looking for Jedi these days."
Marina's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, everyone?"
Atton closed his eyes and waved a hand carelessly. "Everyone. You know, the Republic, the Exchange, bounty hunters, everyone. It's kinda ironic, actually. They acted all superior, but in the end, they're just like everything else. If it's rare enough, there's a market for it."
Marina tried to ignore his jibes. "What about the rest of the Jedi, the ones on Coruscant, the Council?"
"Who knows? Ever since the Jedi and Revan decided they didn't like each other any more and burned half the galaxy to settle their differences they've just been gone. The survivors were too ashamed to show their faces after what they put everyone else through for their problems and switched off the lightsabers long ago."
They fell silent as Marina tried to take in the news. Her emotions were a tangled mess. She was afraid, sad, angry, relieved, and alone, all at once.
Well, almost alone.
Atton was glancing over at her again surreptitiously, and decidedly not at her eyes.
"So, how long has it been since you officially weren't a Jedi? Must be tough, no family, no husband . . ."
Enough! "Listen close you aggravating, slimy little piece of-"
Atton's laughter cut through her retort. "Better get a hold of that temper or I'll start believing you're not a Jedi after all."
Marina's fury was interrupted by a ping from the com notifying them that the emergency override had been activated on the mining tunnel escape hatch. She stood.
"On your feet. The hatch is open."
Atton raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, easy, there's no way I'm going down there without a weapon."
"And there's no way in hell I'm giving you one."
Atton shrugged. "Then I guess you're on your own."
"Unless I make you come." She gestured with her mining laser. Her prisoner looked nonplussed, bordering on bemused.
"Really? You're going to take me hostage into a completely unknown combat zone?"
Okay, so maybe it wasn't the best plan.
"How about I stay here, where I can at least give you directions and a heads up on incoming droids." He produced two commlinks from his vest with a flourish and a cheeky grin. "How about it?"
Marina seriously debated putting him back in his cage, but it was a good idea, however much she wished she could deny it. Instead, she muttered something best not repeated and snatched one of the commlinks from his hand. They were cheap, short ranged, and held only three preset channels. No custom frequencies. She toggled it to the number one frequency. "Check."
"Loud and clear. Remember, you're a princess, not a Jedi; try not to play hero too hard down there."
Marina turned her back and marched towards the emergency hatch without another word. If he says one more smart-ass remark I swear . . . No. Remember Marina, you need him alive. For now.
…
The moment the Jedi was out of view the half-crass, half-teasing grin was replaced by a grim frown, the attitude draining away like a waxen mask left in the sun.
His constant shift of emotions, lust to offended, wheedling to angry, had kept her off-balance. It was both a relief and a surprise – the last thing he'd expected to run into out here was a Jedi, and it was a wonder she hadn't seen straight through him. While he'd never expected to live this long, the last way he wanted to go out was in a battle to the death with a Jedi on space station that was falling apart around them, while they were both hunted by someone else. No, he wasn't going to go out like that. He'd play this Jedi girl for all he was worth to get out of here, and then he'd run so far he'd never run into a Jedi again.
He grimaced and settled back into the command chair. But as things stood, she was more useful alive. For now.