Chapter 7: A Business Proposition

White and black streaked by in a shower of stars outside the viewport. It was silent in the cockpit except for the faint sound of labored breathing, and a barely audible, deep humming from the engines.

I can't believe it, Kyrr thought, she did it… We made it.

Neither Kyrr nor the woman spoke for what seemed like an eternity. They simply sat there, quietly adjusting to the fact they had actually escaped alive; both of them were still a little shaken by the ordeal. After a while, the woman made a few adjustments to the control panel. Kyrr noticed her absent-mindedly move her left hand to the burn on her right arm, as she sat back and stared blankly at the nav computer's screen. Kyrr started to speak.

"I just wanted to say -"

The woman slowly straightened up, then swiveled her chair toward Kyrr with a look of curiosity on her face. He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. He paused before continuing.

"I just wanted to… know if there was a medical station onboard."

"Oh," she replied. "Well, there is a med kit… It's in a storage compartment. On the wall in the hallway, just past the cockpit door."

Kyrr stood up and walked just out of the cockpit area, the door shutting promptly behind him with a quick chunk sound. And sure enough, there was a grey, rectangular durasteel door, about two feet by one and a half feet, halfway up the curved wall. There was a small handle on the right side of it. He opened the recessed compartment, and found a heavy metallic case inside.

He took the case back to the cockpit with him, carrying it in one hand while the other rested on his holstered blaster. When the door into the cockpit opened again, he looked inside and was relieved to see the woman was still in the same position at the controls as she had been when he left. He sat down again cautiously, half expecting her to pull out some hidden weapon she had retrieved while he was getting the medical supplies. When he was satisfied that she wasn't going to, he set the case down next to his seat.

He opened it and found a variety of basic medical supplies. He went right for the painkillers.

Landing that gunship really did a number on me… if you can call that a 'landing.'

He probably had at least minor bruising over most of his body, from the fight in the alleyway the night before, the explosive blast of a clone trooper's thermal detonator that morning, and finally the crashless than two hours ago. Even with the armor, he wasn't indestructible. He was really starting to feel it, now that the adrenaline in his system was subsiding.

He slowly removed his helmet, tucking it under one arm. The woman, glancing over, almost seemed surprised to see that there was actually a human being inside it. The white plastoid jar of painkiller tablets rattled noisily as Kyrr shook a few of them out into his other hand. He tossed his head back, and popped them into his mouth. He almost felt better already.

Setting the bottle down, he rifled through the other contents of the medical case, and found a few pre-loaded bacta injections. He handed one to the woman.

"Here."

She slowly took it from him, looking a little surprised.

She said nothing as removed the protective cap from the needle and rolled back her tattered right sleeve.

The burn on the underside of her right forearm had a dark reddish area in the middle of it, maybe three inches around. The skin surrounding the actual burn had a deep pink coloration that faded away at the edges. She had been lucky that Kyrr's shot had only grazed her, and that the relatively thick fabric of her jacket had protected her somewhat from the full heat of the searing projectile.

Kyrr watched her as she stabbed the needle into area around the wound and injected the blue healing liquid into her flesh. Looking at her closely for the first time, he began to observe other details about her appearance and clothing.

The black jacket she was wearing had an almost cylindrical collar, and was open down the front, revealing a dark green tanktop underneath. She wore a black leather belt with a tarnished and scratched silver buckle, with the holster for her relatively small pistol attached to the right side of it. Her pants were a dark grey and had a pocket on each thigh, and her dull brown leather boots looked worn and distressed.

She had been gritting her teeth, and as she withdrew the empty syringe from her arm, she cried out. Kyrr silently held out the bottle of pain pills to her.

She smiled faintly, and pushed them back at Kyrr as she said, "No, thank you."

She handed him back the depleted bacta injection, and he put it back into the case of medical supplies along with the painkillers. He stood up after closing the container, and started to walk away to put it back in the storage compartment. When he got to the doorway, the woman asked him a question.

"Why do you care?"

He turned around, still holding the medical case in his arms.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean… why does it matter to you, if I'm hurt?"

Kyrr sighed, taking a moment to think. He looked away as he answered her. "Because… you might still be useful to me."

With that he walked away and put the med kit back in its cabinet. As he was closing it, he noticed his reflection in the metal of the compartment's door. It stared back at him, but it was blurry and grey, muffled by the imperfections and scratches in the metal's surface. He could barely recognize himself.

He went back to cockpit, and as he sat down again, a red light started to flash on the control panel. The woman throttled back and the streaks outside resolved themselves into a vast starfield. Kyrr looked out the window at the planet they were now slowly approaching.

"Where are we?" he asked.

The woman had a sullen look on her face as she replied.

"Tatooine."

Kyrr noted the woman's worried expression as she said the planet's name out loud. At the same time, he was relieved to hear he ended up so far away from Coruscant and the Republic itself.

"Good. Maybe I did the right thing, not killing you earlier."

She turned to him. She looked at him briefly, then turned away and looked out the viewport as if something intimidating were looming just outside the ship. Kyrr realized she must have been looking at the planet Tatooine itself. A quiet moment went by, then she spoke. "Perhaps it would've been better if you had. I may be as good as dead now anyway."

"I'm not sure I understand."

She didn't look at Kyrr, but kept her gaze fixed on the planet in the distance as she elaborated. "I work for a crimelord on Tatooine; I was supposed to deliver a large shipment of Ryll spice to one of his contacts on Coruscant. I was unloading my cargo when you showed up, and now most of it is still back at the spaceport. My boss could have me killed for losing that much… showing up on Tatooine again is a very dangerous thing to do."

"Why did you come here then? Why not go to some other sytem?"

"Because, I left the spaceport on Coruscant without a flight clearance… not to mention all the Ryll spice I left behind that the CSF will find... Besides, you're obviously wanted by the Republic, and for all they know I could be helping you willingly. There's no way I could show up on a Republic world and not get arrested the second they pick up on my ship's transponder code."

"That's not necessarily true. I'm sure the Republic doesn't have the resources to keep track of you and me across multiple planets. The Republic is in the middle of a war, you know…"

"If they don't have the resources, why did they send clones after you? Law enforcement is the Coruscant Security Force's job. I don't know what you did exactly, but whatever they're sending soldiers after you for must have been serious enough to get their attention."

Kyrr realized that she might be right. He was simply a bounty hunter, he had killed a lot of people over the years – mostly the scum of the underlevels – but that shouldn't have been enough to warrant special treatment from the Republic when it was in this sort of galactic crisis. He didn't understand why he seemed to be so important to them. Whatever the case, a Republic-controlled planet probably wouldn't be a safe place to be, for either of them. The woman continued speaking.

"At this point, it doesn't matter anyway. Now we're stuck here."

"What?"

"I didn't run the pre-flight checks. On top of that, we got hit before we made it to hyperspace. I'm not sure what happened exactly… It's amazing the ship made it to its destination without dropping out of hyperspace, but the hyperdrive won't work anymore… It's fried. It was my boss' 3 million credit, class 2 hyperdrive engine, and it's completely fried."

Kyrr then realized why traveling from the center of the galaxy to the outer-rim had taken so little time; a class 2 hyperdrive was probably the fastest he'd ever heard of.

"So now the only option is to land on Tatooine?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'm going to need a new ship, if you still aren't planning on killing me. Either way, this ship won't get anywhere in a hundred years using only sublight engines. And it can be too easily identified by the transponder code anyway… I have to get rid of it. I only hope my boss doesn't figure out that I trashed one of his best ships, and that I lost most of his Ryll spice…"

"Do you have enough money for a new starship?"

"Well…No."

"What about just a new hyperdrive?"

"I have 20 creds, that's it. This job was supposed to be my source of income."

Kyrr took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. Then a new idea suddenly dawned on him.

"You could get some money for selling this ship, but then even if you bought a hyperdrive it would be useless without a new ship to put it in. I'm flat out broke at the moment, and I'm going to need a new ride, too. So I say you sell not only this ship, but the Ryll spice you have left in the cargo hold. Selling it would very likely get you noticed by your boss if word gets around… and that's where I come in. I'll agree to protect you from any of your boss's potential hit-men, in return for part of the money you make selling the spice. And also passage on the ship you buy... I've realized that there's somewhere else I need to go."

The woman hesitated for a second, thinking about Kyrr's offer.

"Why do you need me to sell the Ryll spice?" she asked.

"You'd know who to sell it to, to make the most money. I'm sure you know your way around Tatooine better than me."

"Yeah, I suppose I do... I have a few people in mind who might be interested," she said thoughtfully. "Well… it's a deal then. Not that I could refuse if I wanted to… So you're going to be my bodyguard now? What did you do before?"

"I was a bounty hunter. Not so much recently, though. And just to be polite, my name's Kyrr Geron."

The tan sphere of Tatooine was much closer than before. Soon the ship would be in the outermost layer of its atmosphere. The woman made the necessary adjustments to the instrument panel, smiling weakly. "You know, this has probably been the craziest day of my entire life. First you show up and essentially kidnap me, even shoot at me, and now all of a sudden you want to be my bodyguard… I never did trust bounty hunters."

She looked at him directly in the eyes for the first time.

"And my name's Aleina... Aleina Kaede."