Chapter 46
Retrieval
Captain Kartilla stared out the window, ink dribbling down the tentacles that hung around his mouth. "It's over," he said. "It's over."
Acrid smoke poured through the cockpit of the Spicy Squid, leaking out of one of the air vents and being sucked into another. The ship spun dizzily off its axis, the result of the last burst of energy from the engines being disrupted by turbolaser blasts. The internal power was flickering, and the inertial dampeners were either offline, or simply not strong enough to fight back against the ship's drunken spin.
An explosion forced him forward in his chair, and he found himself lying, draped across the yoke that he'd been turning for dear life a moment before. But he'd failed. He couldn't make the freighter move faster than a turbolaser beam.
He saw his navigator, Jorella, standing next to him, trying to pull him up onto his feet. "Don't worry about me," he told her. "I'm already a dead man."
"No you're not!" she yelled right at his face. He blinked, his nictitating membranes sliding slowly across his eyes. She yanked his shoulder hard enough to pull him halfway out of the pilot's chair. "I am not letting you get pulled into the undertow that easily! Come on, we've got a dozen fires to put out! Markra is sealing the hole in the engine room, and Torkol is stabilizing the backup batteries."
She shoved a portable fire extinguisher into his knobby hands, then shoved him towards the portal that led to the rest of the ship.
Stumbling awkwardly, Kartilla found himself in the living quarters. Flames roared through the tiny kitchenette, and instinctively the Quarren captain pointed the extinguisher at the flames and held down the trigger. Blue foam shot out of the nozzle, and it sizzled as it his the flames. Once they were under control, he ran into the kitchen and found the dial that controlled the flow of cooking gas. It was almost too hot to touch, but he turned it until the smell of the gas dissipated.
There was still smoke belching from several of the air vents. He tried to clear his head, to remember where each vent crossed through the ship. Half of it seemed to be coming from the engine room, which was no big surprise. He ran to the cargo bay to find the rest.
Somehow a crate of dried twillfish had been knocked open by the impact, and the small, dry, greasy fish had spilled across the deck. A spark from an overloaded electrical system must have hit the pile, because there was a roaring flame going, and the smell of twill oil and carbon filled the cargo bay.
Kartilla sprayed the pile, but it kept shifting and slowly spreading across the deck as the ship spun lazily through space. For every three burning fish he extinguished, at least one more slid by them and caught fire.
Despite everything, the Quarren found himself laughing. Here he was, his life was at an end, and he was putting out piles of burning fish.
The universe was a funny place.
"All right, pull them in slowly," said the rakish captain of the pirate ship. The ship was a Surronian Corona-class vessel, and its captain was getting impatient. "There is a load of deep sea pearls from Mon Calamari on that ship, and every moment you waste playing with the tractor beam controls is a moment that those pearls are spending not in my cargo bay."
He spared a glance at his informant, a Human male who was standing next to him. The man wasn't part of Hondo Ohnaka's crew, and didn't have a place on the bridge. But he had come so highly recommended, and Hondo had been warned just how temperamental the man could be.
"All of the pearls except for one, of course," he said to the informant.
The man nodded, seemingly ignoring Hondo and watching the viewscreen intently. "That was our arrangement."
"Just how big is this flawless black pearl? You've been a bit... closemouthed about everything. I need to know which one is yours."
The man blinked, and if he hadn't been talking to Hondo, the pirate would have sworn that he was completely unaware of anything other than the freighter on the viewscreen. "About a centimeter in diameter. Black. Only transparent in a small band of the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum, if you Weequay see that much."
"A centimeter? I've seen larger. Why do you seek this gem?"
The man shook his head, and finally turned to look at Hondo. "I give you the information you need to do the job. My information is my own."
"Ah, yes. Even your own name. You do know that I am making a huge exception even allowing you aboard my vessel?"
"You know enough about me to work with me. That's enough."
"Not for my taste, Waylander. I am willing to work with you to reach our common goal. My mother always told me, don't trust a man who's afraid to show you something. Well, you've got a lot hidden up your sleeve. Too much."
"To each his own, my dear Captain. To each his own. Now, if you will excuse me, I will prepare to board the freighter."
Hondo shouted after him, "This conversation is not over! I am coming with you."
"Suit yourself," the man said over his shoulder.
Ahsoka Tano stretched, and something in her back popped. "Ah..." she groaned. "I didn't realize how long I was bending over this inscription."
"You could have put it up on the bench here," her apprentice, Nat, said. He twitched one of his head-tails towards the bench that had several of the Jedi-related artifacts stacked on it. "Did you know that the entire Jedi order stood up against Exar Kun and they nearly destroyed an entire moon just to kill him? This stuff is amazing!"
Ahsoka smiled wryly, "Yeah, and I bet you were never this interested when it was just a boring history lecture."
"I dunno, holding a piece of history is different. This plaque was left in orbit around Yavin for three thousand years before someone found it. It was from a ship that was destroyed in the battle. One of the Jedi used a fusioncutter to carve a message into it. It was actually there. A Jedi, someone who lived and died thousands of years ago was there and he left a message."
"And now you get to read it." Ahsoka held out her hand and levitated the ancient metal rectangle over to her. She held it a few centimeters above her hand, afraid to touch it in case it was more fragile than it looked. She blinked as she looked at it. "Or try to read it... I don't think I've seen Aurabesh this old fashioned since... ever."
She levitated it back to the bench, then blinked and shook her head. "I think I'm getting a headache too. I'm going to walk around for a little bit."
"Okay," Nat said, "But I'm staying right here. This stuff is amazing."
Ahsoka wandered through the cargo bay, then made her way down the ramp. Once she hit the near-zero gravity of the asteroid base, she kicked off from the ground and lazily stretched her back, neck, and limbs until she finally reached the high ceiling of the docking bay. Flipping around, she crouched on the ceiling and looked down.
The funny thing about having no gravity, though, is that there really isn't a sense of direction. The ships looked like they were on the ceiling, and Ahsoka felt like she was on the floor.
Then she cocked her head. "Huh. Wonder what that is?"
From up above, she could see a tiny flashing light in the cockpit of her newly acquired ship, the Whipclaw.
She pushed off the ceiling and fell towards the ground. The asteroid's microgravity might have helped her a little bit on the way down, but not enough to notice. Once on the ground, she braced herself against the underside of the Whipclaw and made her way to the ramp.
In the cockpit, the flashing light appeared to be a message. She pressed the play button on that console, and a hologram came into view.
A man wearing a hooded cloak flickered dimly into existence on the message board. The hood covered his face entirely, and all Ahsoka could picture were the images she'd seen of Palpatine since he'd declared himself Emperor. Then the man spoke, and she didn't recognize the voice.
"Koros L'Larr, I realize we have not officially met. I am Inquisitor Malorum, and I bring an urgent message from the Emperor himself. You are our nearest agent. There have been a series of seemingly simple pirate attacks in the Kalamith sector. We have reason to believe that these attacks are, in fact, attacks by Jedi dissidents."
Ahsoka could only blink. Maybe it was time to let Xho and ZT-47 tear the ship apart and make sure that there were no other surprises that the Imperial government had installed.
Then again, getting private messages intended for an Inquisitor could be useful.
While the voice droned on about each suspected attack, Ahsoka pulled up the latest crime and news reports to start finding more information about each one that the Inquisitor mentioned.
It was time to put on her armored mask and become Riella Masso, bounty hunter.
Author's note: I decided that since I'm writing Exile's Journey in 4-chapter episodes, I should probably label them that way to make it easier to navigate. So I renamed every fourth chapter to include the episode number. Hope that makes it easier to keep track of everything. At some point I might actually come up with a name for each episode too.
Also, my original serial, Saving Christmas: Slay Bells got chosen by the editors of JukePop Serials to be listed on the 'Editor's Picks' at the top of the website! Suddenly I went from only 20 or so votes to, at the time I'm writing this, 49. It's a spoof of action/adventure movies, following a group of special forces black ops Christmas elves. They're the best of the best, and the worst of the worst. But they're still Christmas elves, so they don't say any swear words worse than 'heckerdoodles.' If you like my writing style, feel free to check it out. There's a link in my profile, or you can just look online for JukePop Serials. :)