Sacorria - Vagran pipeline, around the same time as previous two chapters
Darse Loor glanced around the cargo department of his ship, Corellian Jewel. He was relieved. Four Twi'lek dancing girls and about a dozen furry specimens in chains were finally sleeping. The stun setting on his E-11 blaster rifle was truly the best thing since the invention of ice-on-a-stick. All those inferior beings whined way too much, as if twenty plus standard years of the New Order had not taught them anything. And he just wanted them to sleep.
Being related to one of the Corellian Sector's resident COMPNOR agents and an Imperial liaison officer sure had its share of perks. For one, he was allowed to get away with what he was doing.
"Captain Loor?" one of the Stormtroopers in charge of the shipment patted Darse on the shoulder. "Is it true that these things are being transferred to Blobbo the Hutt and not the Imperial Prison in the Estainia Hunting Grounds?"
"That's not an appropriate question, Lieutenant…"
"Geelmen. Aerenna Geelmen, sir." The trooper removed the mask and let her hair down. Darse was surprised to find out that one of the minions assigned to him was a zherry-haired woman with heavy eyelids and a captivating smile. "You can close your mouth now."
"I heard that last name before." Darse thought to himself. He coughed, trying not to look at the woman licking her lips, and did his best to sound like an authority figure again. "What do you think would allow you to ask such a question, Lieutenant Geelmen?"
"My older brother could find out. You know…Aryan Geelmen. I am pretty sure you have heard of him."
She batted her eyelashes, but it was in vain. At this point, she became instantly unattractive to Darse. Geelmen. Geelmen. Of course that Darse had heard of Aryan Geelmen, the notorious xenobiologist from Xyquine II. That man was going beyond what he considered moral, and he did not have high criteria to begin with. Geelmen once reported a Sacorrian doctor he worked with at a laboratory in Sublata for an inappropriate relationship with a near-Human, which was somewhat understandable. But after that, he got quite mad. He was involved with risky cybernetics-related experiments on war orphans and it has been said that his ways were unethical, even in terms of what would be allowed under the Tarkin doctrine. The last Darse heard of him, he was to be dealt with, by no one other than Darth Vader himself.
However, this woman just implied that Aryan Geelmen was…alive. And possibly endorsed by the Emperor Palpatine himself. He could have been kriffin' anywhere, doing kriffin' anything. This sly creature just put Darse in a position where he was obliged to give her the correct answer. The idea of the older Geelmen sibling finding out about somebody flirting with his sister and then refusing to give her the information she wanted immediately made him think of being tortured in a laboratory on a remote location. Somewhere where nobody would hear him scream.
He coughed again and gave response to the grinning lieutenant.
"So, yes. Most of these convicts are going to Thaeme, to be transported to the prison. That is what everybody knows. What they don't know is that, before we head to Thaeme, we are dropping a dozen Selonians and four busty Twi'lek maidens at the Central Spaceport of Vagran, as a hand of peace extended to Blobbo the Hutt. We may need his connections with other Hutts in future and this was what we came up with."
"And if these slaves were not registered, nobody will know. I think I get it." By this point, Aerenna was whispering in Darse's ear. "Blobbo the Hutt will love his new Twi'lek dancers, once they come round, of course. But why does he need so many Selonians?"
"They're low-maintenance, he said. They don't need actual beds; their fur never gets too long to require a trim. And they cannot mate with each other, due to the females being infertile, so there won't be younglings."
"I have dealt with many Hutts before, captain Loor. This one sounds strange. Why wouldn't anybody want to own minor beings from the day they were born?"
"He is…very clean, so I was told. He cannot stand younglings' barf all over the place and his twin majordomos are not the kind who would deal with it easily." Darse shook his head. "Anyway, I have to hit the 'fresher one more time before we've landed. See you later, make sure these beasts don't wake up."
"What? Do you think Blobbo will smell your…?"
"Shut up. I really have to go!" Darse ran out.
Aerenna glanced at twelve stunned short-furred humanoids lying on the floor. She was taught that Selonians could not function outside of their dens; that they were lost like fish out of the water without their queens. This was one of those rare moments where she doubted what she had learned at the Imperial Academy. This bunch had rioted all the way from Selonia, almost making the starship lose its curse in the middle of the solar storm coming from one of the uninhabited systems in the sector. Maybe they were actually sentient after all?
Her brother firmly believed that all of the species proclaimed to be non-sentient had special talents and that, the closer to Humans they were, the more chance there was that they could be used as organ donors. It all made sense to her. Kriff her parents for thinking Aryan was a black nerf; he was got to be right, all along.
She ran her hands through the fur of the nearest Selonian with shiny, yet rough grey fur. She stopped short of his waist, realising that she had been staring at his brown, torn trousers for too long. Then again, he was probably not likely to wear any clothes once at Blobbo's. If Darse was not willing, perhaps this creature was?
"Back off, bugslut!" he muttered through his sharp teeth. "Blast it!"
Aerenna gasped and jumped back.
"Your life is going straight to the sarlacc pit, babe. Why not have some fun with me, for one last time before that?"
"I'd rather have some fun with a sarlacc. I said blast it."
The Selonian jumped up and kicked the Stormtrooper in her stomach, just as Corellian Jewel came out of hyperspace. She hit her head against the wall. He checked her neck for vital signs. She was alive and likely to come round at some point. He had to think fast, but before anything else, he removed a piece of his tattered tunic and tied it around her mouth, gagging her with a ball of fur.
With the blaster rifle in his hands, he looked at his eleven unconscious friends, regretting that he would not be able to take them along. When the captain fired at them, everybody other than him was hit. His pretend-to-be-stunned stunt worked, for once. He wished they would wake up and attack the other three Stormtroopers somehow, then escape to the nearest town. But he had to make a choice and the only option was to save himself from being executed before even being subjected to whatever torture Blobbo had in store for his slaves. He had heard of Hutt crime lords and what he knew sounded worse than being eaten to death by a tunnel worm in a dead-end.
He swallowed a lump and wiped some sweat from behind his ears.
"Now, what if I stick her there?"
Looking away, he removed the woman's uniform. He found Human bodies to be disgusting and this one, with pale white skin and a narrow waist was the worst he had ever seen…just where did she get the idea that he would be up for a quickie with her? Had she ever seen a proper, plump, fertile Selonian? With one last shrug, stopping himself from spitting on her, he shoved her through the 150x150 cm chute. She still had her comm and if there were no dianogas on the ship, she would've probably survived. And perhaps she was willing to have her brother attach a pair of lekku on her head, either way?
Just then, Darse Loor came back. He seemed to have adjusted his hairdo while at the refresher.
"Babe, we are about to land. Would you care to help me out?" He grinned, and then realised that his underwear was hanging out. "Oh, kriff."
"Babe?" Is that how Humans were flirting? Disgusting!
"If you need help wiping yourself, no. I am not going to help you."
Darse frowned. "So, you don't like me anymore because of my bowel issues, lieutenant Geelmen?"
The Selonian hoped that nobody could see him shiver underneath the heavy Stormtrooper armour. "When I need information, I need information, captain Loor. It's all business, after all."
"Fair game, lieutenant Geelmen. Fair game."
At this point, Darse really, really looked as if a tunnel worm had chewed him and spat him out. Or - as the Selonian thought Humans would say - he was on the verge of tears.
A trio of Stormtroopers arrived before he could witness his captor humiliate himself over what he thought was rejection.
"We have landed at the Anaslinea-Hoc spaceport, sir." One reported to the captain. The other was observing the limp bodies on the floor.
"They don't seem to have woken up. Shall we just carry them to a speeder outside?"
"I do hope that you told the local authorities that we need a special speeder for our cargo and that you…" Darse flicked the invisible credits between his thumb and index finger.
"The man working in this shift refused to take credits. Instead of it, he presented me with a small pack of cigarras and some sort of a kabob. Apparently, today is a holiday."
"Niice, lieutenant Bargle. Let's make the best out of it. I would not mind spreading the bribe credit in two if people are bound to help us today, according to whatever stupid tradition."
"Five, sir." The Selonian heard himself say. "Or I'm telling Aryan that you scammed me. I could also tell your cousin Kirtan Loor about it."
Darse was close to hating Aerenna Geelmen at this point. He was hoping for a quckie and what he got was betrayal spreading like a deadly virus.
"She's got to be more than a Stormtrooper. She just knows too much." He thought to himself.
They got out of the starship. The landing strip was located right next to what appeared to be an endless black sand beach, in the middle of a large gulf. Some mountains were visible on the horizon, disrupting the perfect picture of the sea becoming one with the skyline. On the coast, houses were scattered on a nearby hill, with a particularly large one dominating the sight.
What looked puzzling to the Selonian was a large transparisteel barrier topped with a laser fence, rising up to seven metres in the air, leaving a very narrow strip of the beach between the spaceport and town in the distance. Just what was located there?
"I see your brother hasn't taught you anything about Vagran, Aerenna." Darse stroked his chin and gave the Stormtrooper a side-eye. "Nearly every community on this planet is surrounded by barriers, whether they're physical, chemical or plain energy screens. Vagranite non-sentients put "wild" in "wildlife", so to say...and they can kill you dead, yup."
"Of course I knew that…babe."
Darse could no longer take this woman's mixed signals. She could have as well been making faces at him underneath that helmet! He wished to be out of here, now. The hours he was scheduled to spend negotiating with Blobbo the Hutt sounded like a party with the Emperor's personal courtesans, in comparison to Aerenna's constant baiting. And it seemed that she had gotten worse after she was left alone with the ship's precious cargo.
"Let's empty the garbage from the chute into the disintegration unit and go." He looked at the group, who had finished putting the slaves in the front trunk of a bulky speeder. "These pesky locals won't allow us to leave the spaceport before we've gotten rid of what could be potentially dangerous to the planet's wilderness."
The local man with a cigarra in his mouth, who seemed to be the only person working in the morning shift that day, had a group of heavy-duty droids pull the chute cartridge out of the side of the starship. He looked on from a small repulsorlift platform, as they were emptying it inside of a large mobile garbage disintegration unit.
"Don't burn me alive, kriffslider!" somebody yelled. The man gasped, dropping the cigarra out of his mouth, when he realised that a pale hand was pulling him from inside of the round entry pipe.
He pulled out a slim, red-haired woman in her negligee.
"Bloody grey bears!" the spaceport employee hit his head against the lever. "I almost disintegrated a pretty lady! We need to give you a chemical shower, now!"
"What is going on up there?" Darse put his palm above his eyes and looked up. "Holy bantha poodoo…Aerenna? Then…who just rejected me?"
The three Stormtroopers looked on, as the fourth threw himself into the water.
"After the intruder, you fools! It could be somebody from the Rebel intelligence, somebody who lived in our garbage department for the last four hours!"
Lieutenant Bargle nearly jumped in the water after the rogue Trooper, when he noticed rough waves coming from the distance. Only then did he remember that there were fifteen, not sixteen bodies lying on the floor of the ship's cargo department.
"Captain Loor. That's one of your precious gifts to Blobbo, running away!"
"What the kriff?" Darse kicked the speeder's chassis. "And the three of you cannot count to sixteen? Start the search! We need to find this lower form of life and teach it a lesson. You know, we can always tell Blobbo that we accidentally killed one of his slaves when we stunned them."
"No sir…I mean, yes, sir…I mean, no sir!" Bargle looked on, as the intruder, apparently an excellent swimmer, got out of the water and crawled through the sand, straight below the durasteel barrier. Seconds later, there was screaming that sounded like the Selonian slaves rioting right before they were stunned…and a Stormtrooper helmet was fired out of something located in the middle of the restricted area, followed by a loud burp. It landed straight in front of Darse Loor's feet.
"What did you just gives to the only sarlacc on Vagran?" the local worker dropped yet another cigarra out of his mouth. "We feed it a special diet; we don't allow it to eat something that could make it sick. On the second thought, I wants those credits. There is no way I is able to explain this to our authorities, not without losing my job!"
"Call off the search. It's not like anybody could have survived that. One piece of scum less is a job well-done, after all. And that slimey Selonian will be slowly digested for a long time to come. Kirtan will be proud of me" Darse grinned, glancing at Bargle and the other two Stormtroopers. "Now…where exactly is Aerenna getting this chemical bath?" His grin was painfully wide at this point. "I wonder if her brother would approve of what was, in the end…my…flawless…extermination plan."
About thirty minutes later, the speeder departed to Blobbo the Hutt's mansion in the hills. Elsewhere, a Selonian in tattered clothes was limping and crawling his way towards Anaslinea-Hoc. He was nearly swallowed by the unexpected Sarlacc and only quick thinking, that Humans were sure he was not capable of, saved him from doom. Selonians were accustomed to quickly removing their clothes when they were not in presence of Humans, so getting off the heavy Stormtrooper armour just at the moment when the slimey tentacle was about to grab him, was a result of a lifelong habit. Nothing more.
He reached a dusty street leading to what seemed to be the waterfront. A small park was separating the street from the black sands beach. Four buildings with way too many balconies and a three-storey dark green hedge next to one of them were closer and closer. He had to reach one of them, somehow. Had he been given some water and food since his capture on Selonia, this would have been so much easier. And he was starting to doubt himself.
"If I am seeing a giant hedge, then I must be nearing my end…"
Sadly, his feet, no longer listening to him, were dragging him in the direction of the hedge. There were so many legends his den's storytellers told to younglings about afterlife, but none of them mentioned any kind of gigantic shrubbery. The leaves smelled so good, almost like berries. He got close enough to caress one of them, and then he dropped.
Seconds later, a Human female with shortish, greying hair, wearing a flower-patterned blouse and a long, indigo blue skirt ran out of the green whatever. She picked the blaster from the Selonian's limp hand and, before he knew, had him at point-blank range.
"I normally don't greets my visitors like this, but you…you is suspicious!"
"Don't shoot!" he yelled. With one last droplet of strength, he managed to add. "I escaped the slave transport."
The woman tilted her head.
"Why do you owns a blaster, then?"
"Long story. I was kidnapped on Selonia and they were taking me and eleven more males from my sept to somebody called Blobbo the Hutt." He clearly didn't like the rifle that bought him freedom being placed against his forehead. "I escaped. It's a long and strange story. Am I a refugee now?"
She was now smiling. Whatever he had just said, she finally believed him.
"We's all refugees here. We were almost killed with fire. It's a long and strange story. What's your name?"
"Soleo."
"I's Laoda. Let me bring you something to drink, you must be dehydrated. Can you get up and follow me inside?" She let him lean on her shoulder.
"Am I s-supposed to get into of the giant shrubbery?"
"Silly young man, Soleo. My property ain't no shrubbery. Sure the ol' Taliore needs a trim, but it's the cosiest lil' hotel you will find in town. You's going to love it here."
Soleo shrugged and followed Laoda inside.