Chapter 26: Making a Deal
14 BBY 0 months 12 days
Ry woke to a point of yellow-blue light piercing her half-open eyes and to a low rumble that she gradually realized must be the friction of a starship's hull against a planetary atmosphere. From that, Ry concluded that the starship must have reached their destination and pulled out of hyperspace. She groaned, stretched and realized that the planet's bright little sun was staring her full in the face through the side viewport. She smelled laundry detergent and felt something rough under her hands, though beneath her body the surface was soft.
When Ry had rubbed her aching, itchy eyes all the way open, she saw that she was curled up on a couch, covered in a coarse dark blue blanket in the passenger area of a starship. The passenger area was neat and tidy, with a little kitchenette at one end where a striped tea towel hung nicely off the handle of an oven on a miniature stove. The teatowel swung and cutlery in a drawer somewhere jingled as the starship hit a patch of atmospheric turbulence.
This was Wakeh Gunma's starship, Ry remembered. Asking a woman she'd only just met to take her to an unknown Siluan elder on an unknown planet somehow didn't seem like such a good idea to Ry now. Sure, she'd escaped from the bounty hunters back on Takodana, but what real hope was there that going to Ava Gerges would in any way help her get her Force skills back?
And beyond even beyond that, it seemed to Ry that no matter where the starship was headed, she was screwed. Vader or someone had authorized the release of her full biometrics to the network of bounty hunters, so going anywhere that was more or less inhabited meant running the risk of getting caught. But if Wakeh had Ry headed for some Force-forsaken backwater nowhere planet, how was Ry supposed to get her data back before someone shut down her account in the Imperial computer system?
As for Wakeh, she was nowhere to be seen. Must be in the cockpit, Ry concluded, and swung her legs to the floor just as the starship hit a jolt of atmospheric turbulence. Where in the galaxy are we? she wondered. She didn't like this, being shuttled who-knows-where by someone she barely knew. It made her feel tense and restless in a way that rode up and down her nerves.
She stumbled over to a round little side viewport on the left side of the ship as facing forward – realizing now that she'd slept in her boots – and squinted out onto the bright landscape as the ship hurtled towards the surface of the planet.
Under a blue-bronze sky stretched a flatland, covered in a grey-green fuzz in the distance but merely a textured tawny white-brown-grey under the path of the starship. In the far distance, she could see bare, rocky hills but no sign of sentient life.
Bracing herself for more turbulence, Ry walked as quickly as she dared over to the viewport on the opposite side of the ship. This view at least offered what looked like a dry riverbed and more hummocky ground nearby, towards which the starship veered, but beneath them was still that massive patch of dead tan-white-grey. Still, no sign of sentient life.
Back to the first viewport, with the ship headed at a slightly different angle, she could see hills as far to her right as the viewport allowed, but most of what she could see was just flatland, that dead zone stretching out almost endlessly beneath. At the far edge, three massive cranes reached slowly up and down and four mining crawlers crept across the surface of the land, sucking up minerals like bottom feeders on an ocean floor. Probably just some contractor with droids, Ry thought bitterly.
She clenched her fists at her sides and seethed with cold, unspeaking anger. She'd lost more than she thought. This was not a place she wanted to be. How in the galaxy was she supposed to get her data from here? How in the galaxy was she supposed to get out of here when she was ready to go? There was no way she could rebuild her life in a place like this.
She turned sharply away from the viewport. No more turbulence at the moment, just the low rumble of the ship's hull against the atmosphere. She strode quickly over to the lavatory and shoved open the door, but before she could step inside she heard Wakeh's voice from behind the door to the cockpit.
"I never said it wasn't a good dress, I just said it was kind of expensive," Wakeh was saying. There was a pause, and the low sibilance of a whiny voice over the comm saying something that Ry couldn't quite make out. Wakeh sighed. "I'll tell you what," she said in a gentle but parental sort of voice, "if you can ace your grad thesis, I'll buy it for you." Pause, more voice of the comm too soft to hear. "I love you too. Just work hard at that thesis, K? But I got to land in a sec here, so tell your dad I'll call him later." More whispering of the comm. "Oh, sure, if it's quick, then put him on."
It occurred to Ry as she listened that even though Wakeh had taken her blaster, a sharp blow with a blunt object to the back of the head was all that it would take for Ry to knock Wakeh out and then take control of the starship into her own hands. She looked around for something that would do the trick, and pulled a compact mini fire extinguisher down from the wall.
"Oh yeah?" Wakeh was saying. "Send it to me. I'd like to have a look at that." There was a pause, and the voice on the other end of the comm had a firm and masculine sound to it. "No, but I'm on my way there now to check things out," Wakeh said, and the comm murmured again. "Yeah, I'll be careful, honey. But hey, I'm about to land. I gotta stop at Ava Gerges' place first." The comm-voice scratched out something that sounded concerned. Wakeh laughed. "Don't worry, it's OK. Love you, K? Talk to you later."
Ry listened, one hand resting on the cold handle of the cockpit door, the other tightly gripping the little red fire extinguisher. Now! Ry told herself and went for it, but when she tried to slide the cockpit door open it wouldn't yield to her quiet pressure. Wakeh must have locked it, she realized. Fuming, Ry quickly and quietly clipped the fire extinguisher back in its place on the wall, then shut herself in the lavatory.
The lavatory was just a little closet of a thing with a compact toilet and a stainless steel sink, but Ry just turned on the tap without bothering to look at her morning-face in the mirror. When she rubbed her hands with soap under the lukewarm water, a trickle of pale brown came off in the water. Her skin-paint.
In horror, Ry realized that her hands now showed streaks of that awful Sith-grey that she was always so careful to hide from everyone except for people like Nathan and Vader who already knew. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and realized why her eyes hurt so much: she had slept with her dark-brown contact lenses in.
Shrieking curses in her mind, Ry slid the door open a crack and peeked out of the lavatory. She could feel in her stomach that the ship was slowing. Wakeh would still be in the cockpit. She quickly tiptoed out and checked for her handbag from beside the little couch where she'd slept. It wasn't there. All at once she remembered: she didn't have her handbag with her when she went into the cantina on Takodana. And she ditched her black denim jacket plus most of the parts of her light-sabre in the washroom of the cantina. Her beautiful pocket knife she had given to Wakeh. Damn her! Ry thought.
Ry quickly searched through her pockets. All she had left with her was her red kyber crystal, her ID card and a couple of key cards for access to IMAg facilities. Not even a little travel pack of skin-paint.
Out the window, Ry could see the ground zooming closer. She went and shut herself tight in the lavatory again. By spreading out the paint that was left on her skin, she set to work to make her hands human-coloured again, but she couldn't help but think: her current veneer of normalcy would only last a few days at best. What was she supposed to do about that on a Force-forsaken planet like this? If she was to trick Ava Gerges into letting her hide here, she couldn't go letting him know who she was.
With a jolt of the ship and a rumbling grind that sent little shock-waves up through her feet, Ry realized that the starship had landed, wherever it was that they were. She quickly raked her fingers through her now-short curly hair. She hated this boy-cut look she had given herself but it would have to do.
The rattle and hum of the engine abrupted stopped. Ry heard the cockpit door slide open, and there was a knock at the lavatory door.
On the other side of the door, there was a sound that Ry figured was Wakeh clearing her throat. "Hey," Wakeh's voice said. "We're here."
"Yes, I'll be out in a bit." She was almost finished getting cleaned up but still needed a moment to finish getting her game face on before she had to deal with Wakeh.
"Ava Gerges is out there, so I'm going to head out and talk to him. Come as soon as you can, K?"
"Thanks," Ry said, remembering to play nice. She listened to the sound of Wakeh's boots walking away on the hard floor and then heard a rough grinding sound that she took to be the outer door of the old starship swinging open. "Wakeh, you've come!" a voice said, a little high-pitched for a man yet still somehow masculine. "Ava Gerges! So good to see you!" Ry heard Wakeh say. Ry thought she sounded much more relaxed when she spoke to Ava Gerges, more pleasant than the day before, or whenever it was that they left Takodana.
Wakeh's footsteps down the gangway and the sound of her and Ava Gerges' voices faded into the distance outside the starship. Ry did her best to brush her teeth without a toothbrush, then realized that there was a brand new one, still in its crinkly flimsiplast wrapper, sitting right beside the tap. She quickly tore it open. Wakeh must have left it for her, but she was not in the mood to feel grateful. Not with that unrelenting desert waiting for her outside the ship.
But once Ry had rinsed the taste of the licorice-flavoured toothpaste out of her mouth, double-checked her normal-human make-up and stowed the gifted toothbrush and borrowed tube of toothpaste in her handbag, there was nothing for it but to head out.
Wakeh had left the side portal of the starship open. Standing there in the bright daylight and the blast of hot, dry desert air, Ry looked down to see Wakeh standing several meters away, talking to a tall skinny Pau'un in a long black cassock. At least, it looked as if it must have been black before it was sun-bleached. But what struck Ry was Wakeh: the line of her shoulders had softened. Her whole demeanour looked somehow less assertive, more cordial, and she smiled with what Ry could only guess was real affection as she spoke with the old man. Ry folded her arms across her chest and scowled at them before remembering that she had to play nice if this was going to work. And so, she caught the old Pau'un's eye and smiled.
"Welcome here!" he called to her, then said to Wakeh, "So this is your passenger?"
"Ava Gerges, Sen Kaydo. Sen, Ava Gerges," Wakeh said, gesturing by way of introduction, with a slight edge creeping back into her voice.
Ry forced a smile and started to walk with a k'dunk k'dunk k'dumk of her boots down the gangway and then a crunch crunch along the sandy gravel of the dry ground of the planet. And then her foot hit something soft and springy. A pungent aroma filled the air, not sweet but vaguely unpleasant, a terpenoid smell. Ry looked down. There at her feet, among their fuzzy grey-green leaves, a host of sunny yellow daisies gazed up at her, undaunted by her presence.
In her mind, Ry cursed a blue streak. She knew where she was now. Memories of standing there with Nathan, the stupid little stinky daisies, the stormtroopers rounding up the Siluan monastics, the golden mist of her toxic cocktail trailing behind the massive spray-rig...but the loathing she felt at coming to this place wasn't shame. She knew why she had done what she did here on Yemer: she did it to prove to the Emperor that she was no less than Vader. That was the whole futility of it, that was her shame, to have worked so hard and come so far only to have it all come to nothing and end up here, a nowhere planet with no hope of even stealing back her own data so that she could rebuild her life. Smouldering anger woke up in her.
But if Jedi training had taught Ry anything, it was how to keep her cool. She walked up to Ava Gerges and extended her hand. "Nice to meet you," she said pleasantly, with a polite nod. "I'm so sorry to come without any notice, but Ava Kirrin said I'd better come to see you about something."
Ava Gerges shook her hand a little awkwardly and gave her a quirky smile. "No trouble," he said, "I'm always here. Usually anyways. I see our little Yemerian daisies were here to meet you."
"Oh, is that what they're called?" Ry said and gave a light laugh, pleased with herself for playing along so well.
"Anyways," Wakeh said, "I'll let you two talk. I got a couple of things to do before I take off, but I'll poke my head in to say bye before I go."
"Thank you, Wakeh," Ava Gerges said, and gave her a rather elegant half-bow. Wakeh bowed back, and turned to go, but not before giving Ry a look that said I'm watching you. "Thanks for getting me here," Ry said and smiled, pretending not to know what that look meant. She turned to Ava Gerges.
"May I call you Sen?" he asked.
"Sure." Ry shrugged.
"The sun is rather hot. Let's sit down inside." He motioned for her to follow him. Ry looked around and realized that they had landed in a flat spot among the hummocky ground she had seen through the viewport. Ava Gerges walked quickly towards one particular mound that was a little different from the others. It was about a meter high and at least five meters across and looked not unlike a huge version of the nests that mud-wasps make, all bumpy pasty earth dried pale on the outer surface. The plants around it looked somehow different too: not the scrub and sagebrush of the open spaces, but big spikey succulents with rows of thorns along their fat, juicy stems, with shallow piles of rocks mounded neatly around their feet.
Going around to the side of the mound that sat in the centre of these strange plants, Ava Gerges opened a little wicker door, a flimsy thing that was more a little gate than anything. They both ducked through it and went down a series of steps into a round room sunken into the ground. A series of round windows on the far side let in the natural light but it was pleasantly cool inside.
"Please take a seat," Ava Gerges said, and gestured to a little stool with a crocheted black-and-white seat cover. Ry sat down and looked around. The place looked tolerable, for the time being at least. There was a low bed at one side of the room and a compact metal biofuel burner near the door, which Ry assumed from the cast-iron skillet hanging nearby must be a primitive sort of cook-stove. On the floor at her feet was a colourful braided rug. From under the low wooden table that sat in the middle of the rug, Ava Gerges pulled out a basket of clay teacups and put two on the table, then pulled up a second stool and sat down.
"May I offer you something to eat and drink?" he said.
"Sure, if you're having something," Ry said lightly, but her mouth started watering. She hadn't eaten anything since that soup back on Takodana.
"I thought you might be hungry," Ava Gerges said, and reached under the table again. Out came a box which he opened with spidery movements of his long grey-brown fingers to reveal round honey-coloured wafers. From a thermos, he poured something clear into the teacups. "Please help yourself," he said and waited while Ry took one of the wafers.
"Oh, it's good," she said, not just playing nice but really meaning it. The wafers had a light nutty flavour and felt pleasantly filling, even if they were a tad dry. She took a sip from the little clay teacup. Whatever it was was surprisingly fresh and cooling, crystal clear like water but of a slightly more viscous texture.
Ava Gerges nodded politely. "I'm glad you like it," he said. "Those are what they call Yemer cakes, and the juice is from our friend outside." He gestured out the window behind him to where Ry could see a massive blue-tinged plant outside, all fleshy spikes with rows of thorns up and down them. "But," he said, and folded his long-fingered hands in his lap, "tell me, what brings you here?"
Ry swallowed her last bite of the wafer and studied him for a moment: his long grey-brown oval face and deep-set dark eyes, his straggly beard and the dark stone hanging from a pale cord around his neck. Pau'uns were known to live far beyond human lifespans, so Ry could only guess that he must be very old from the wrinkles on his face. But even if age could in any way index wisdom, he had a mild and unassuming look about him. Ry felt a swell of confidence: this was going to work.
"Well," she said and paused to take a sip of her drink for effect, "I was raised in the Jedi Order." She watched Ava Gerges carefully to gage his initial reaction.
He nodded knowingly. "You need a safe place to stay, don't you?"
Ry forgot to contain her look of surprise. "Well, yes," she said.
"It won't be a problem. The next mound over is a guest room." He gestured to his right with a smooth motion of his long arms. "I just need to put fresh linens on the bed and it will be ready for you."
For a moment, Ry sat stunned with her teacup waiting in her hand. She hadn't even finished half her story, but now here she was, forward momentum abruptly stopped, the engine of her mind all revved up with nowhere obvious to go. She took a sip of her drink and tried to gather her thoughts. "Thank you, I'm deeply appreciative," she said, reminding herself that she had what she wanted now: a safe place to lay low until she could learn what she needed to recover her power, and then get out. What she didn't have was an obvious route out of the moment of awkward silence.
Ava Gerges reached under the table again and pulled out a complicated apparatus: a set of four knitting needles, a ball of synthetic-looking yellow yarn and dangling from the needles, a knitted tube that Ry thought might be the beginnings of a long sock. Clack clack went the knitting needles. Ava Gerges at least was at peace with the silence.
Ry took another sip of her drink and decided that she might as well find out what he knew. "Thank you," she said again. "But I see you've had your own troubles here. Was that some kind of dead zone we flew over on our way here? What can you tell me about it?" She watched him carefully. She was pretty sure she knew exactly how that happened, but his answers might be telling all the same.
Ava Gerges somehow managed all four knitting needles in one hand while he took a sip from his little clay teacup. "There isn't much I can tell you," he said. "It happened four or five years ago. I was away in the mountains on pilgrimage at the time, but when I came back the Yemerians who live just beyond the far side of it told me they saw an airship of some kind flying back and forth and spraying something, I don't know what. And now everything is dead there."
Ry made sure to look serious and sound sympathetic. "How many were killed?"
Ava Gerges raised a slender eyebrow. "You must know that it wiped out the entire monastery and some of the locals too. There aren't many of us left now."
"What a pity," Ry said softly, mournfully, and took another sip of her drink.
Ava Gerges shrugged and kept on knitting. "Yet shall the Light be unbroken," he said, making it sound almost casual and off-hand. "It seems they died well, from what the ground that received them has to say about it." He paused his knitting again, reaching down for his teacup with the little finger of his right hand elegantly extended. He took a sip of his drink and started knitting again. "But you must know all about that," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You were there after all."
Ry felt her upper arms and legs tense instinctively but forced herself to keep her cool. "What do you mean?" she asked, making sure to sound confused not defensive.
Ava Gerges sighed and let his hands and the knitting needles together come to rest in his lap. "Can I tell you a story?" he asked.
"Of course."
"You may not know, but back when I lived on Coruscant, before I joined the monastery, I was a psychologist. A very good psychologist, mind you." As he spoke, his hands came back up all by themselves and started knitting again. "I had a way of understanding people," he went on. "My clients liked that. But then other things happened: my partner died, and that was very hard for me. We had been together for three hundred years, you know. But a friend suggested that I come here to the monastery, to get away for a while, and so I did."
Ry nodded, wondering where on the face of the planet this was going.
"I didn't realize until I came here, to the desert, to this life to this work," he gestured to the plants outside the window and then to his knitting, "just how loud my life, even my mind was in those days when I worked on Coruscant. The more I became quiet, the more that sense of understanding grew within me. I could see, I could understand things without people having to tell me. It scared me, actually, when I first realized it, or rather, when I realized that not everyone finds this ability through their monastic practice. 'This is your gift,' my elder told me, but to tell you the truth," he said with a little laugh, "it sometimes feels more like a curse. It isn't fair, you see, if I can see other people and they can't see me back."
Ry was staring at him with widening eyes now. She felt an explosive burst of energy building up inside her, ready to propel her somewhere, anywhere, but she forced herself to sit still. She couldn't just go bursting out of the door; Wakeh Gunma was still out there. "And your point is?" she said with more edge to her voice that she expected to hear.
Ava Gerges sighed and let his knitting fall to his lap. "I am telling you this so that we can have a clear understanding between us, not to accuse you," he said. "You are welcome to stay here as long as you need to, if you wish."
"And do what?" Ry spat back, then laughed grimly. There was no need to play at being a good visitor now.
"There must be a reason why Ava Kirrin sent you here, besides needing a place to hide. I'm sure he could have offered that himself."
Ry folded her arms across her chest. "You must know all about that, being a mind-reader and all!" she said scornfully.
Ava Gerges picked up his knitting again. Clack clack went the needles. Ry stared at him in disbelief. At a time like this, he was going to sit there and knit?
"I see some things, but I don't see everything," Ava Gerges said. "And besides, this question: why are you here? What is it that you really want? Whether you choose to share your answers with me or not, it is very important for you to answer these questions clearly to yourself, at least."
Ry gave the same grim laugh again. "What do I want? I want back what she took from me."
Ava Gerges sighed and studied Ry's face, but his hands and the needles and the yellow yarn didn't stop moving. "You allude to things which I am not seeing at the moment," he said at last, "but would I be correct in surmising that your ability to use the Force has been compromised?"
Ry narrowed her eyes at him. "What makes you think that?"
To her surprise, something like laughter, all but restrained, flickered across his thin lips and deep-set eyes. "Because you haven't just reached out your hand in the air to choke me yet."
Ry almost laughed in spite of herself but forced a scowl instead. "That isn't funny," she told him, and then all at once the wicker door rattled violently as someone pounded at it from outside.
"Come in!" Ava Gerges said.
The tall and muscled form of Wakeh Gunma burst into the room. Her eyes narrowed when she saw Ry.
"Do you know who she is?" Wakeh demanded of Ava Gerges, pointing a big accusing finger at Ry.
"More or less," Ava Gerges said. He spoke calmly, but he stopped knitting and his hands came to rest in his lap.
Wakeh's face was stern. She took a deep breath and turned to Ry.
"Sen Kaydo," she said quietly, "does the name Ry Kyver mean anything to you?"
Ry folded her arms across her chest and looked at Ava Gerges to see what he would do. He shrugged. "No," she lied brazenly. "Never heard it."
Wakeh snorted. "Look, your game's up," she said and tossed something that Ry just barely managed to catch before it hit her in the face: a hard, oblong object, cool and slim and just slightly heavy in her hands. She opened her fingers and saw a flash of blue. It was her pocket knife.
Wakeh folded her arms across her chest. "You read what it says on the blade lately?"
Ry wrapped her fist tight around the folded knife. She wasn't going to submit to open it to see, not in front of Wakeh. Long years and the mess of everything that had happened since she went to Iwaki had wiped it from her mind, but with a sinking feeling in her stomach, she remembered. Long ago, when she was given that knife, her colleagues in her first-ever non-Jedi workplace had pooled funds to inscribe the blade that Nathan was giving her. Engraved on the fine durasteel blade were the words: Ry Kyver, the power is yours.
Ry glanced at Ava Gerges. She could lie and say she'd stolen it...or would Ava Gerges' reaction show the truth?
"If she is who you think she is, what difference does it make?" Ava Gerges cut in, putting his knitting down on the little table with the teacups.
"My brother is in an Imperial prison camp because of an order she signed."
Ava Gerges raised an eyebrow and turned to Ry. "Is this true?"
"I have no memory of it," Ry said emphatically. She had, in fact, signed many forms authorizing the use of Imperial prisoners to do the grunt work at various IMAg experimental stations. She had never bothered to pay attention to what names were on the lists.
"Oh, yes you did," Wakeh said. "You signed off on an order for Imperial prisoners to work at the slaughterhouse on Arum. He was on the list." This much had months of gruelling reconnaissance taught Wakeh and the rest of the Gunma family.
Ry scowled. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about that now," she said, but even to her, it sounded like a mere formality.
Wakeh rolled her eyes. "Damn well there is! I know about the bounty. If you don't help me get him out, I'm going to collect it."
Ava Gerges glanced from one to the other. "But wait..." he began, sounding almost anxious.
Ry, however, was not going to wait. The gears of her mind were turning and now they had somewhere to go. The facility on Arum was an IMAg experimental station. The computer in the control room would be connected to the Imperial network. She could log in and download her files, then get out and go on her way.
"No," Ry said, "I'll help you. But I know that place. It's complicated, so you'll have to take me with you for this to work."
"Na-ah," Wakeh said, "and let you blow the whole thing?"
"No, remember?" Ry said, "There's a bounty out for me. I don't want to get caught any more than you do. But to do what I would need to do, I need to be there. Otherwise, it'll be hard to get through without tripping the security."
Wakeh scowled. This was not what she'd wanted. She wanted Ry to tell her how to get in and then get this done with Ry Kyver safely locked up on her starship while she and her sister took care of it. But from what she'd learned about the facility on Arum, Ry just might have a point.
"So what's your plan?" Wakeh asked grudgingly.
Ry Kyver smiled. A plan had just crystallized in her mind. "To start with, we'll both need wetsuits..."