So, it's been a little while, but I've finally gotten around to starting the sequel to Secrets of the Outer Rim. So, SOTOR I takes place in 19 BBY, starting shortly before the events of Revenge of the Sith and continuing into the aftermath. This story starts in 14 BBY, five years later, and I think it can still broadly fit the current canon. I still haven't finished Bad Batch because it's just awful, but from what I understand about the show, neither this nor the original contradict it, so I'm going to keep going. Reading the first one is probably not strictly necessary, but I would still recommend it, as that does a lot to introduce the characters involved and can change how you look at them as they're reintroduced here. There are obviously new elements here, time has passed and I'm telling a new story, but some things stay the same. Mainly the fact that the Grand Duchy is still fighting the Empire in its own way, albeit on unequal footing, and has various connections and alliances set up.
The big difference of this story is that we're going to see this from a new perspective, so not only are the new elements going to change the dynamic, but the perspective we have on the familiar is also going to be different. I hope I can accomplish that in a way which is interesting and new, but still true to the last story I wrote. Second of all, another goal I have here is to flesh out the world. Palpatine and Vader have definitive end dates, they die on the Death Star II while the Rebel Alliance is attacking it. I can't build the stakes in that way, so I've gone another way with this, and I hope that works out well. So, here is my attempt.
Secrets of the Outer Rim II.
Act I.
The Edge of the Galaxy.
Chapter I.
The Rings of Taaszon: Part I.
"...and that was the Anchorhead Chain Gang with their rendition of Lapti Nek. Get your Chain Gang fix and more here at Radio Outer Rim! Radio Outer Rim, your one and only choice for independent radio in the Imperial Outer Rim. Now, we'll have more uncensored, unmonitored, uncontrolled radio for you in a moment, but it takes a lot of credits and a lot of risk to operate this - " I tuned out the noise of Radio Outer Rim DJ asking for support as I continued my sweep of the zone perimeter. This was probably the most boring and unnecessary part of this job: just flying a Mining Guild TIE Fighter around the edge of our allocated zone of the rings of Taaszon. No one was going to be out here, and even if they were, the Empire would deal with them way quicker and way more effectively than we could. I've been flying this route at least once a week for the past three months, and the most exiting its ever gotten is when an Electrothermal storm rolled into our part of the wings. Still though, I wasn't complaining, the Mining Guild was paying good for this, and my quarter long contract was about to expire anyway. Soon enough I'd be back home with a good payday to my name. The only downside of the job was the Empire breathing down our necks and forcing all these security measures on us.
The biggest one was, of course, the existence of this zone itself. The Mining Guild had a central orbital station in a geosynchronous orbit within a ring, and a zone in the radius of the station in which they're allowed to operate. Straying outside of the zone gets you detained by the Empire and, for a contracted employee like me, the Mining Guild wasn't exactly going to pay to get me back. To leave the zone, you needed express permission from the Empire, and this even included the regularly scheduled freighters taking the asteroid ore out of here and bringing supplies in. As for the planet below, the Empire strictly forbid anyone from accessing the surface of Taaszon and they made it very clear that violating that was punishable by death. I didn't know what was on the surface of that planet, but from up here, it looked green, white, and blue with some clouds in the sky - just a usual planet. I've thought about asking why it was so secret and forbidden, but I was an alien in the vicinity of a whole lot of Imperial guns, so I wasn't about to put my neck on the line like this. No, all I needed to know was that these rings of ice and rock around the planet were practically untouched and the Mining Guild was making a fortune off of selling the minerals, and I was making a small piece of that fortune on this contract. Simple security: some flights around the zone, but mostly just walking around the orbital station with a mining laser. It was an easy job, and a payday was right there, best not prod the Empire right now.
"Graizo to Ashtso, storm coming in from quadrant 3, quadrant 4 clear. How about 1 and 2?" Captain Lleledo Graizo, a yellowish-green skinned Mirialan male and my partner for this patrol, radioed me. Graizo was another freelancer, having experience as a mercenary and as a bounty hunter, but now he was getting up there in his years, so he was tending towards cushier assignments like this. That didn't stop him from being bored though, because I guess this job just doesn't get the adrenaline flowing like years of high level, dangerous work. As for me, I was at an earlier phase to my career, but I mostly worked these kinds of security job. I was handy with a blaster rifle and could be reasonably athletic when I needed to be, but I didn't want to kill people. I was much more comfortable looking tough in the background while the Banking Clan moved a credits shipment than I was with taking in a target. This kind of job was a natural fit for the both of us then: quiet enough and lucrative enough to ease Captain Graizo into retirement, and big enough to capture the attention of a young gun like myself too.
"Ashtso to Graizo, all clear over on this end. I'll do another quick sweep of quadrant 1 on the way back if you need it, but if a storm is coming in anyway, I think we ought to be heading back." I responded over the holofrequency, glad to see this patrol coming to an end. The orbital station itself was shielded from the Electrothermal storms, but these dinky little TIE fighters? not a chance. No, when the red lightning clouds rolled in, the Mining Guild retreated to our station while the Empire retreated to their own bases as well, including their annex on our mining base. No one is quite sure how these red clouds work outside of at atmosphere, what generates the lightning, or why these storms even exist, but no one wants to be out there during these storms.
"Copy that Zaverra, I'm going to make my way in. Complete your sweep of the far side and then head in as well." Graizo responded, heading straight for the hangar because the storm was coming in from his side, while I turned in a sort of parabolica. I was flying into quadrant 2 and sweeping that while swinging back to the station. There wasn't much to see though, mostly just shuttles bringing the actual miners back to the station, along with the few pieces of equipment that couldn't be engineered in such a way to weather the storms. Taaszon was a quiet place, far from any kind of civilization, and occupying a section of the galaxy that the Empire was only just beginning to map. The only reason I even know about Taaszon is because I was offered this job. Nothing is ever going to happen here. At least, that's the way it's supposed to be, so when I saw a strange blip on the radar, I didn't believe it at first. I thought it was a glitch on my sensors because that honestly seemed more likely than for there to actually be something out here, but then I realized the blip wasn't going away.
I veered off my path and towards the blip, turning on the searchlights on the TIE as I neared the location. I wasn't sure what I was going to find - hell, on some level, I was still expecting it to be some kind of aberration or glitch rather than anything real - but as I rounded an orbiting asteroid, I finally found something. A sleek, black, smooth-profiled ship, the kind of thing you would hardly notice if you weren't looking right at it, but that smooth profile was crumbled by a nasty impact, likely with one of the asteroids orbiting this. If I had to make a guess, it was some kind of stealth ship creeping through the asteroids before getting crushed in the chaos of these conditions. Either way, I could tell there was a vital sign coming from the ship, and with the storm still coming in, I figured the best thing to do for now was to bring this in and let someone else figure out what to do with it. The Empire had an annex on our space station for a reason, after all. I turned my TIE fighter around and fired the tow-hook - a Mining Guild modification, mostly for debris removal purposes, but it could also serve me here - latching onto the ship and dragging it with me as I returned to the Mining Guild station, the reddish edges of the electrothermal storm coming in close as I came in for a landing.
"Ashtso to station command, I found a disabled vessel out in the asteroids. I'm bringing it in behind me, deal with it accordingly." I reported, coming into the hangar with the stealth-craft behind me, releasing it in the center of the hangar before docking my TIE in the usual spot. I took off the oxygen mask and climbed out of the cockpit, leaping down to the ground as I watched the senior security officer, flanked by two guards, approach the ship. I walked over the left, keeping my distance, but trying to get a look in on the situation. Captain Graizo was no better, because he was right behind me following, having overheard my report from the comms, and just as curious to see what was going on here. It was a sharp, triangular vessel with a split down the middle, and the security team soon managed to hinge the cockpit open, revealing a wide but low cockpit containing a passed out blue-skinned woman with black hair.
"Ashtso! Get her to the medical bay and into a Bacta tank, her vitals are weak!" the security officer barked out orders, deciding to take advantage of my rubbernecking. Soon enough I found myself dragging her passed out body to the medical bay while the senior officer, Graizo, and the two guards started looking over the ship. I imagined that they were trying to get all the information they could before they had to hand the vessel over to the Empire. I imagined that would likely be her fate as well, since she didn't seem to be an Imperial officer - neither her species nor her dress fit the bill - but first, we needed to make sure that she'd live long enough to be of any use for the Imperials. She was a fairly light woman, dressed in a non-descript black jumpsuit, and the shade of her skin in an otherwise near-human package implied that she was either a Pantoran or a Wroonian, at least I thought she was, because I didn't know of any other blue-skinned near-human species.
"Doctor Pelto! I need a Bacta tank!" I shouted as I got to the medical bay, seeing the human female that served as the chief doctor here helping an injured miner change the bandage over an ugly burn - such accidents happen during the mining process - the men and women working on this station work a number of different roles. In the case of larger asteroids, a shuttle is dispatched with floating miners cutting into the rock itself, hoping to extract pure mineral content, in smaller cases, asteroids are taken into the base wholesale, where the miners and the mining droids break them down into more manageable content. The rock is separated from the ores and minerals, which are then melted down and processed into pure bars. A percentage of these bars is handed over to the Empire for their own use, the rest is loaded onto our freighters for extraction. The freighters come in bringing supplies and leave full of bars. Anyway, the point is during all of that, there is plenty of room for injuries, some minor, many substantial, and Doctor Pelto is the one ultimately in charge of dealing with all of that.
"What could you have possibly done to - oh. Oh no. Okay, follow me." Pelto started incredulously, thinking that I came in wasting her time, but when she turned around to face me, she found that the situation was serious. The medical berths were left alone for the time being and Pelto led me into the back room where she had a number of Bacta tanks used for the most severe of cases. Pelto found an empty one and turned back to me "Okay, undress her and hook her up to the oxygen mask, I'm going to set up the tank. Do you know what species she is?"
"Umm...a Pantoran?" I guessed.
"Is that a guess?" she asked, again incredulously.
"I don't know her, I just pulled her ruined ship in before a storm. I don't know anything more than you do." I countered, pointing out how clueless we all were and, considering her present condition, we weren't exactly going to be able to ask her anytime soon.
"Ugh, fine. I'll set it for default humanoid parameters, and we'll hope for the best." Pelto responded, setting up the tank according to some rather broad parameters, which might not necessarily be the most helpful, but probably won't kill her either. While she was doing that, I unzipped her jumpsuit and, thankfully, found that she had underwear on below. There wasn't any bruising, not that I could tell, so it didn't seem like she suffered any blunt force trauma in the accident, but in the accident, it seemed like the life support systems on her vessel started to fail, so she was cold, and her breathing was shallow. We probably didn't have much time left when we loaded her into the Bacta tank and let her float in the healing liquid, but maybe the fact we were now in a controlled atmosphere made the situation slightly less critical. Either way, the fact that she was in the tank meant that she was going to live.
"Keep me posted on the situation, there is something weird going on here, and I want to talk to her before the Empire takes her away." I told the doctor, hoping that the human woman would help indulge my curiosity about all this.
"Fine, but don't go sniffing around too much. If all of this really is Imperial business, I'm not going to let the consequences fall on me." Pelto responded. So, if my curiosity started to interfere with Imperial business, Pelto wasn't going to cover for me. I guess that was fair, after all, if the Imps got involved in the situation, I wasn't going to stick around much either. This job is very lucrative for me and, more than that, it's almost over, so the last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of the Empire. If getting to talk to her first is really that much of a big deal, I'll let it go, because I know Pelto would rat me out if the Imps came knocking, and I know she'd have every right to do it. Everyone on this station ultimately answers to the Empire, and that power they have over us means no one wants to do anything that might anger them. Hell, us Mining Guild contractors did everything we could to avoid Imperial business entirely. If the Empire noticed you, it was usually a bad thing.
Yellow, dark green, and black jumpsuits were the usual wear for Mining Guild personnel, including us contracted security. That meant that as I entered the mess hall the next day, it was a lot of the same color, but it still didn't take me long to find Captain Graizo and Merziza at our usual table. The Mirialan and I got to be pretty close friends while working together, and I suppose I could say that he's become somewhat of a mentor figure for me. As for Merziza, she was a blue-skinned Rodian and a noted sniper, and the two of us bonded because, quite frankly, we were two of the only female contractors on this station - for better or worse, the Mining Guild kept us in separate quarters from the actual Mining Guild people, so places like this mess hall were some of the few places where both groups meshed, not that you'd know it from the looks of it. We all shared a mess hall, but all the contractors stuck to a handful of tables while the vast majority of the hall was occupied with Mining Guild people, including both security personnel and miners - but hey, for better or worse, I actually liked her. I sat down with them at my usual spot.
"So, what's the story with the blue girl?" Merziza asked the two of us, having heard about the situation from the two of us, but not having the whole story. Unfortunately for her, we didn't have the whole story either, in fact, we barely knew anything more than she did.
"She's a blue girl, she flew in on some sort of stealth ship, and I found her crushed under some sort of asteroid. I brought her in and took her to a Bacta tank." I filled in just how limited my understanding of the situation was.
"We took a look at the ship but even looking at the undamaged parts, we couldn't match it to any known design. We even tried to analyze the manufacturing techniques to see if we could pin it to some shipyard, but we got nothing. We had to hand it over to the Imps, see if their scientists and engineers might be able to figure out anything else." Graizo explained his side of the situation, which I actually didn't know much about. Now, stealth ships are, by their very nature, hard to identify, but there are ways to try and identify them. The method that Graizo and the other security guys tried to do is look at the way it was put together and see if they could find any telltale signs of Corellian manufacturing or the Kuat Drive Yards or anything like that. Unfortunately, they weren't able to figure out anything before the Imperials came and took the ship away. It was their problem now and we weren't ever going to see that starship again.
"What do you think was going on here?" I asked Graizo, wondering if the older bounty hunter turned contractor would have a better insight into all this than the rest of us.
"I don't know Zaverra, but I think it's pretty clear that the Imps weren't behind this. The ship isn't an Imperial design, it's not consistent with Imperial manufacturing trends, and they haven't come to seize their crushed prototype yet. No, the Imps are just as clueless about all this as the rest of us. This means that we're dealing with somebody picking a fight with the Empire, and they're advanced enough to produce a stealth ship we didn't pick up on at all until it was smashed to pieces by an asteroid. The way I see it, we're dealing with something way beyond our pay grade. This job is almost over, we're all about to get paid, and there is no reason to start poking around in the Empire's business." the Captain responded, thinking that it was better to stay out of this entirely. I saw what he was getting at: we were a bunch of aliens contracted with the Mining Guild sharing a space with the Empire - that means we're a few degrees of separation away from anyone that the Empire actually sees as important - so sniffing around was objectively a dangerous thing to do. Add to the fact that, like he said, the advanced stealth craft implied we were dealing with a serious conflict that the Imps were fighting, and yeah, it probably was better to stay out of this. I recognized that his logic was perfectly sound, and I knew that the best idea would be to forget all about this and just take my payday, but that didn't change the fact that I was curious about all of this, and I felt a strange pull towards this strange woman.
I'm not a huge believer in fate or destiny or any of that stuff, but I had to imagine there was a reason why I was the one to discover this woman and this draw I felt towards her was something a bit more substantial than mere curiosity. I know myself well enough to say that i wouldn't feel so strongly about this if I just wanted to know more about the blue lady in the Bacta tube, so what exactly the connection was, I couldn't say, but there was something greater than I could immediately see going on here. So, this is how I found myself zoning out during our stay at the mess hall, my head fully occupied with perhaps the most interesting bit of business we've encountered in our whole time here, but simultaneously the most dangerous. It's a security job, the worst thing we normally have to worry about is a worker's uprising or a haywire mining droid. In theory we have to help capture any intruders and deliver them to the Empire, but that hasn't happened, not until now anyway. The first time we actually see someone violating the Mining Guild zone and we've stumbled onto some sort of galactic conspiracy.
"Zaverra, come quickly, I can't believe it, but I think she's waking up." Doctor Pelto whispered into a private channel in my coms.
"I gotta go," I told my tablemates before abruptly getting up and making my way towards the medical bay. I know I was meddling in business I had no right involving myself in, but I felt a draw to this in a way I haven't before, and that has to mean more than just mere curiosity. I have to at least try and figure out what's going on here, that will at least tell me if there is an actual reason to all this or if it's all just some kind of lie. I did worry for a moment that Pelto might have double-crossed me and told the Empire about this little arrangement I tried to make with her, but when I entered the medical bay, I saw no sign of Imperials, whether they be officers or stormtroopers, so I did relax a little bit. Instead, what I saw was the human doctor beginning to bring the blue-skinned woman out of the Bacta.
"It's incredible. She was in a crushed ship with failing life support for who knows how long, but once I put her in the Bacta tank she started healing like that. And this is all with very generalized settings on the tank as well - I've never seen anyone heal this quickly in a tank that wasn't specifically set up for their species, age, gender, and lifestyle data." Pelto started, getting excited at the medical aspect of all this. We knew nothing about this woman and set up the Bacta tank with the broadest, safest settings possible, which normally means a long but stable healing process. Here though, we saw her heal in a single day. I watched as the Bacta drained out of the tank, leaving the blue-skinned woman in her black bra and underwear leaned against the back of the glass with a breathing apparatus on her face as she began to come to. At the same time, Pelto started the opening process for the tank "You stand there and be ready to help her out, I'm going to get her a robe."
"Got it," I stepped forward as the front of the cylindrical tank opened and I saw her stumble forward, holding onto the side of the tank, then she took another step forward. I grabbed her as she fell out of the tank - it was a few inches off the ground - and helped her get the mask off. This is when I realized I truly had no idea what species she was, since her eyes were a solid red. No pupils, no irises, nothing, just a solid red eye...it was pretty unsettling to be honest. It turned from pretty unsettling to downright scary when those glassed over red eyes finally started to focus and I found her glaring at me.
"Where - " she started off speaking in a posh accent, almost like she was coming from the Galactic Core or something, but then she caught herself and switched to a more typical Outer Rim accent...very strange "Where am I?"
"You're in a Mining Guild station in the distant outer rim, over the planet Taaszon. It's a restricted zone and the Empire is going to find out about you any minute now, so if you don't want that to happen, I suggest you start talking." I responded, thinking a bit impulsively and perhaps making an ultimatum I wasn't prepared to make, but it was too late to back out now as I helped her up and Pelto handed her a sterile-looking white robe. The blue-skinned, red-eyed woman looked down on herself as she put the robe on.
"Who undressed me?" she demanded.
"I did, we needed to get you into the Bacta tank right away." I answered, explaining myself along the way.
"I have your clothes in a storage closet." Pelto answered, making it clear that nothing was taken from her, well, except for the one thing we didn't have any control over.
"I take it this means my ship was confiscated?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"That was the Empire, there's nothing we can do about that now." I answered.
"Wonderful...when is the Empire going to see me?" she asked with a sigh, intent on facing her problems one at a time.
"That would be now," I practically jumped out of my skin as I turned to see the gray uniform of Director Amstrun, the human male in charge of the Imperial annex attached to this station. The officer, dressed in a gray uniform and cap with a blue, red, and white rank badge on his right breast, was flanked by four stormtroopers, two on either side. Over my pay grade indeed "Doctor Pelto, Security Officer Ashtso, we'll take it from here. I suggest you clear the room."
The implicit threat was clear. This was our one and only opportunity to get out of the situation, and if we didn't, we would face all the consequences of the situation. I saw Pelto start to move, and I wasn't far behind when the blue woman raised her right hand up and spoke.
"No, they stay." she spoke, voice clear and even, eyes trained directly on the Imperial officer as far as I could tell. Doctor Pelto and I shared a glance from either side of the woman, not sure of what to do, but we didn't get a chance, because Amstrun spoke again.
"Fine...they stay." he accepted, voice sounding a bit vacant and a sort of pained expression on his space...what was going on?
"In fact, you're going to go. You and your men are satisfied with what happened here. You will leave and forget all about me." she commanded, turning around and crossing her hands behind her, in absolute control of the situation.
"No...no...we...yes. We are going to go. We are satis...satisfied with what happened here. We will leave and...and we will forget about you." Amstrun really struggled now but his struggling was silenced by an over-the shoulder glance from the blue-skinned woman which seemed to break him. He repeated everything she said before turning around, his men in perfect unison with him, and leaving. There was an unnatural stiffness to how they walked, a stiffness which they carried all the way out of the medical bay, only dropping when they left the room. I thought that once the stiffness ended, they might come to their senses and come back for her, but they kept moving, heading back to the Imperial annex, as if they were no longer under her control, and instead following her guidance on their own volition.
"Doctor Pelto," the blue-skinned woman addressed next, making the human woman stand ramrod straight. I thought for a moment that she might just be following out of fear rather than mental control, but as I saw her stay like that, waiting for a command with a vacant expression on her face, I realized that the blue-skinned woman was controlling her too...just what were we dealing with here? I was old enough to remember the Jedi of course, it's only been five years since their failed coup and the proclamation of the Galactic Empire to protect against such threats, and there were rumors of the Jedi being able to trick the weak-minded with ease, but this was on a whole different level. This was taking control of a group of people, including an Imperial officer and a doctor, so not exactly people that I would describe as weak-minded, and besides, the Jedi were extinct. They were a bunch of corrupt would-be magicians living in an ivory tower on Coruscant while the entire galaxy suffered during the Clone Wars, then they tried to use that war to seize power only to get defeated by the Clone Army. But then, if this woman wasn't a Jedi, what was she? I didn't know, but I did know that she was commanding Pelto to do her bidding "Get me my clothes, now."
"Yes, of course...I will get your clothes." Pelto too bent to her will, heading over to the storage lockers at the far end of the med bay and receiving the blue-skinned woman's clothing. She ditched the robe and put her jumpsuit back on before turning back to Pelto once again.
"Excellent, now leave us." she commanded and Pelto left the medical bay. That left me alone with this woman who I just saw control five Imperials and our resident doctor. I thought about my options. I had a blaster pistol on me, but could I really get a shot off before she'd stop me? And even if I did, do I have any reason to believe a blaster bolt would even do anything to her? I've never encountered anyone of her species, and I've never encountered anyone using the kind of power that she uses, I have literally no idea what I'm up against. The only thing I have our faint memories of the stories I heard about the Jedi and the news reports I heard right around the proclamation of the Empire, neither of which seem particularly informative or helpful right now. So, when those solid red eyes turned to me, I had no answer for them "You are going to find me an empty room on this station and ensure nobody asks any questions about me, understood?"
I felt a pressure pushing down on my brain, a pressure I felt through my whole nervous system. It wasn't so much an immediate snap to a straight up and down position, more a heavy weight pushing me towards that position. As for her command, well, I felt every thought in my brain twisting towards it, slowly consuming my mind with that one, sole action while a part deep inside me begged to resist. I suppressed that urge for now, feeling I still had a bit of freedom, a kind of freedom Pelto and the Imperials didn't have, so I wanted to play along before she took that away from me, because I had no doubt she could. No, I would play along and figure out what to do next once I was safe.
"I am going to find you an empty room and I will ensure nobody asks any questions about you. I understand completely." I started playing along in my mind and my body followed along concerningly quickly, the words practically spilling out of me before I could think it. It was like as soon as I stopped resisting her influence, she just gained complete control of everything. Is this how Pelto and the Imps felt the whole time or is even this a degree of freedom above what they experienced? I couldn't be sure, but one thing I knew is that I didn't want to find out exactly what they experienced.
"Walk casually, act as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Pretend you have somewhere to be but it's not an emergency." the blue-skinned woman instructed as we made our way from the med bay to the residential wing, the powerful alien instructing me on how to keep a low profile and ensure nobody is going to question it or bother me. At this point, I didn't think that she was using her powers to mask us, rather, she was using a totally natural form of social manipulation. If we approach this situation with a certain amount of confidence, purpose, and normality, people are willing to see things that totally aren't in the ordinary and see them as something completely normal. The mind has a way of blocking out the unusual and unexpected, and the blue-skinned woman is taking full advantage of that. We got through the halls, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we found a room that was empty, likely to remain empty, but also wouldn't raise too many questions if it was suddenly occupied. It was in the contractors' wing, not far away from where my room was, and likely would be filled in if we had more staff on hand now. As it is though, we're coming to the end of a contract rotation, so the Mining Guild is unlikely to bring in people now. Why do it now when you're going to clear everything out and bring in new people soon enough anyway? Well, either way, this room isn't going to make much of a difference anyway. The two of us entered the room, the blue-skinned woman looked around and found everything was to her satisfaction, then walked over to the viewpoint, leaving me standing next to the door not sure if I was allowed to go or not.
"Why did you try and protect me from the Empire?" the red-eyed woman asked, now dropping that disguised accent and speaking with her natural voice. I thought for a moment about how odd it was - coming from my perspective anyway - that the more common-sounding accent was a front whereas the more posh, upper-class accent was what came natural to her. I was not nearly comfortable enough to continue that line of thinking though, because she wasn't using mind control now, she wasn't putting up some kind of front, rather, she was talking to me as a person, and I had no idea if that was good or bad.
"Nothing happens here, nothing has ever happened here, then right when I'm coming back into the base before an electrical storm, I come across your ship. If I hadn't, you most likely would've died in the storm, and even if you didn't, it probably would've fried your life support systems even further. I end up saving you and loading you into the Bacta tank, and I think that means something. There is a reason why I was drawn to you and there is a reason why, out of all the ways I could have reacted to you, I became fixated on you. I know it sounds ridiculous from someone in my position, but I couldn't just let the Imperials take you in without trying something." I explained, trying to convey about how I felt and how this was truly something I hadn't experienced before. I felt a genuine, completely new connection to someone I've never seen before, and this has never happened to me before.
"You know, when I pushed against Amstrun and his stormtroopers, their minds fell instantly. When I felt Pelto, her mind was so consumed by fear that she was defenseless, but when I reached out to you, you were able to resist, how did you do that?" she asked, calmly still looking out of the viewport, not even flinching as a lightning bolt tore through the red clouds outside and icy particles rained against the window.
"I don't know, I'm sorry. All I know is that I felt a center degree of independence, even when you pushed against me, I even felt an urge to resist, but I decided to go along with it and resist, thinking that was safer than to test you." I explained, hoping that my answer would be satisfactory, because I had no idea what she was fishing for here, what she wanted to get out of me.
"Interesting. It is good that you relented. The mind is a delicate thing and there are many ways to influence it. A mere trick, a more forceful persuasion, or even downright invasion of the mind. If you had pushed back too much, my power could have snapped your mind, perhaps it would have simply left you an amnesiac, perhaps it would have rendered you catatonic, maybe it would have outright killed you. Remember that. I am here, I am going to conduct my business and complete my mission, you are going to know this, and you are not going to interfere. Agree to these terms and I promise no harm will come to you, refuse, and I have no qualms about leaving you a broken lifeless wreck. Are we clear?" the woman explained, spelling out just what the situation was, and the consequences of crossing her. I was afraid of the Empire, I feared what the end result of letting all this happen was, but it was clear to me now that this woman was the more immediate risk to my well-being. Let her do what she wants, turn a blind eye to whatever chaos she wishes to ensure, and come out of it on the other end a little bit closer to the end of this job and never having to deal with the Imperials this closely ever again.
"I understand...thank you." I responded, deciding that being humble and thanking her for her mercy was the best course of action here. With that, I was finally granted the freedom to leave the room.
Over the next few days, a number of odd things happened, all of which served to throw the station into chaos.
The first incident came in the Imperial annex. There was an explosion in the annex, within the Imperial research lab, but that is all the Imps were willing to tell us. Still, it doesn't take a genius to put the dots together. I know that the Imperials confiscated the blue-skinned woman's ship, I know they likely took it to their on-site research facility before a transfer elsewhere, and I know the woman has immense power. I don't know if she used her power to blow it up or if she was able to get her hands on high-grade explosives without anyone noticing, and I'm not sure which is scarier, but I do see a number of possibilities as to what she actually did. One possibility is that she blew up the ship and only the ship, with the express purpose of destroying evidence, the other possibility is that she targeted the whole lab so that not only would the ship be destroyed, but so would any data they were already able to collect. The third, and perhaps most dangerous, possibility is that protecting her interests wasn't her only goal. Perhaps the research facility itself was one of her goals, perhaps killing Imperial scientists was a goal, and maybe destroying the ship as well was merely a way of killing two birds with one stone. The idea that she was actively and violently sabotaging the station started to seem more and more likely based on everything else that happened.
The second incident came on the Mining Guild side of the facility, and I was a lot more directly involved in this one than the last incident. It went a little something like this:
"...look I'm not trying to be any kind of way about it, I just don't see why a species capable of Basic that fluently understands Basic would respond in their own languages. You can't tell me it's not more clunky to have a conversation in two different languages than it is in the same one." I rolled my eyes as Captain Graizo and Merziza got into a rather stupid and pointless discussion in the mess hall. Basically, the point is Merziza started talking about some relatives she had and Graizo, with all the cultural sensitivity of a battle droid, decided to ask if they were the kind of Rodians who only ever spoke Rodian. Naturally, Merziza found this to be a rather ridiculous statement, and now the elder Mirialan is trying to explain his actions away. There wasn't any serious malice to any of this, I don't think, Merziza was mostly just trying to explain to Graizo how block-headed his remarks sounded, Graizo was being an old man about it all, and I was just bemused at the whole interaction. I think when all of this is over and we finally get to move on with our pay-days, I will still try and keep in touch with these two.
"You act as if this is a situation that happens. Has any other species ever actually tried to talk to - " Merziza was in the middle of responding to Graizo when, all of a sudden, alarms started blaring throughout the facility. The three of us, along with all the other personnel in the mess hall, whether they be security or otherwise, tensed up and waited to hear what the situation was this time.
"Alert! Alert! All available security personnel load up in your nearest armory and report to the processing wing immediately. The heavy excavator droid has gone haywire. Heavy weapons are required. Arm up and converge on the processing wing. I repeat, arm up and converge on the processing wing. Alert! Alert..." the alarms continued to blare but the three of us were already moving, as were the other security personnel, Mining Guild employees and contractors alike. Even Imperial stormtroopers were leaving their annex to respond to the crisis. The heavy excavator droid was a massive four-legged machine with a powerful mining laser. It was rarely used, only really ever leaving the base if we needed to break down a massive asteroid quickly and money wasn't a concern, but we all knew the kind of power that it possessed, and now that power was being turned against us. Heavy weapons are required indeed.
A Mining Guild officer fumbled the controls, nervously trying to get the door open. Finally, a contractor pushed him out of the way and jammed a security spike in the door, hacking it open. The rest of us rushed in, going for assault cannons, rocket launchers, heavy blasters, thermal detonators, and all sorts of weapons. I even saw a group of Mining Guild security men grabbing an E-WEB cannon and carrying it out. Personally, I opted for a heavy-duty repeating blaster, the kind of thing capable of putting a lot of laser fire downrange very quickly. Armed and dangerous, the three of us joined the rushing group of responders in heading down towards the processing wing - where new asteroids were brought in to be broken down and processes - which was also where the droid was stored. The good news was that meant the droid hadn't gotten far yet, the bad news was that was also one of the largest and most open areas of the space station, meaning it was one of the few areas where the droid would be at its most effective...so much for this being a cushy job.
"Turn left, those idiots are going to get slaughtered down there. We're going to set up here on the balcony." Graizo decided, guiding us away from all our peers that were heading for the stairs and through a blast door, depositing us on an observation balcony. This was meant for Mining Guild leadership to observe the workers and droids as they tore down the asteroids we brought in, for now though, it would be functioning as a gunnery platform. This was also where I got a good look at the excavator droid. The basic design was inspired by the OG-9 homing spider droids used by the separatists during the Clone Wars, but the chassis was more heavily plated due to having to operate under extreme conditions - it may not be expected to be under blaster fire, but it was expected to be able to operate in the extreme cold of space and the extreme heat of a meteorite in low orbit - and a more dangerous laser. The regular spider droids had a conventional heavy blaster meant to take on infantry, this had a superheated continuous beam meant to be able to saw an asteroid in half. Needless to say, it wasn't the type of thing that you wanted to get hit with. So, here I was, in the middle of my cushy, high paying Mining Guild job up against a mining droid that was actually more of a threat than the actual military offer it was made after. Maybe these rare catastrophic moments are why this job pays so much after all.
"Try to aim for the joints! Maybe we can at least ground this thing in one spot!" Merziza called out as she began firing her armor-piercing sniper rifle at the joints, trying to see just how much specialized ordinance it could soak up. I joined in with a blast of automatic fire aimed at another joint, hoping that if we could take out two of its front legs, the thing would come down in such a way that it wouldn't actually be able to hit anything. As for now though, the droid was perfectly capable, and we could do nothing but keep firing and watch as it incinerated a mixed squadron of stormtroopers and Mining Guild security. The droid had been marching forward and focusing on the floor thus far, but it seemed to realize what we were going, because I saw it rotate around so that the undamaged back joints were facing us, while the heavy laser at the bottom of its spherical head aimed higher than it ever had before...right at our balcony.
Fortunately for us though, that's when the security crew finally had the E-WEB set up, and their heavy repeating cannon was now aimed directly at the joints we had been whittling down, perfect. The droid's right rear joint finally failed, and the beam fired up and to the left, just missing the balcony. Graizo pushed the two of us and himself off of the balcony and onto the floor in the hallway behind us just as the balcony collapsed. The three of us were stumbling onto our feet just in time to see the Imperial stormtroopers surround the now crippled droid and finish it off with direct blaster fire. So, that particular extended disaster had been the second of the chaotic incidents, but there had been a third. This third incident had Director Amstrun summon all the Mining Guild security personnel - all of us contractors- to the Imperial annex for questioning. I found myself just one person in a long line opposite a group of stormtroopers, Amstrun pacing back and forth between us, waiting to hear what exactly happened and what this incident had to do with all of us.
"There are a number of you unaccounted for. I will be lenient and assume those of you missing are the casualties from yesterday's tragic incident with the heavy excavator droid. Yes, and what a tragedy it was. That droid tore through the facility for thirty-four minutes and required a complete and thorough security response, including the deployment of my entire contingent of stormtroopers. In the fighting, seventeen Mining Guild security personnel and eight Imperial stormtroopers were killed. A Mining Guild heavy excavator droid was destroyed, and considerable damage had been done to the processing wing. This damage will take at least two weeks to fix, rendering this facility effectively useless for that period of time. A period of time that corresponds almost perfectly with the end of the current Mining Guild contracts for this station. Now, I'm sure you're asking what all of this has to do with each other, yes?" Amstrun began, continuing the Imperial trend of having a flair for the dramatic.
"Well, in taking inventory after the crisis, we found that an Imperial shuttle had gone missing. Further digging revealed that an unknown subject broke into the Imperial annex, hijacked a shuttle, and took it to the surface of Taaszon. This is an action that is strictly forbidden and would normally be met with a harsh and appropriate Imperial response, however, thanks to yesterday's crisis, nobody was in the annex to prevent it. We now believe that the excavator droid was a mere diversion, a clever distraction to divert attention away from a nefarious true purpose. Relatedly, we recently received a ship containing a mysterious alien. Said alien escaped our grasp by means which I myself am not even entirely aware of at this stage, and the ship, along with the research lab within our annex in which it was stored, was recently destroyed. All of these events, in concert, have given us reason to believe there is a larger conspiracy at play here. We believe the captured alien to be the predominant suspect in all of this, but her actions have given us reason to believe she had considerable help. Accomplishes with intimate knowledge of the station and the means to assist this terrible conspiracy. Furthermore, with your contracts on the verge of expiration, we consider you all to be the most likely suspects. A perfect crime if you will, you get to sabotage the Mining Guild and the Empire before collecting a pay day and leaving this system forever. At least, it would have been the perfect crime had we not caught on. The guilty party, or parties, are encouraged to come forward now. Turn yourselves in now and your colleagues will be spared from the punishment we are ready to deliver." Amstrun explained with vicious delight, Imperial stormtroopers taking aim at us at that exact moment.
A tense silence descended upon the line-up as Director Amstrun slowly walked past each of us, scanning for any sign of fear or nervousness. Now, I knew that the blue-skinned woman was responsible for at least one of the incidents and I would wager that she was responsible for the other two as well, but I wasn't going to let any fear show, because, as scary as the Empire could be to aliens like me, I was more terrified of the red-eyed woman than I was the Empire. This was the woman who took only a day to recover from being in a crushed spaceship with failing life support systems, this was the woman who mind-controlled an entire group of Imperials as if it was nothing, this was the woman whose very mental touch pushed every fiber of my body towards submission. I was plenty scared and nervous; I knew I was exactly the person that the Empire was talking about, but I wasn't going to crack, because I feared the consequences if I ratted her out more than I feared the consequences of whatever cruel and brutal collective punishment Amstrun had in mind. I already knew he wasn't going to have the stormtroopers execute us, because if he did, he would be eliminating all of his leads. No, we don't matter, if he was going to kill us, he would've done it already. Our very survival at this moment is proof of the leverage we have over him. So then, if he wasn't going to kill us and nobody had the information he wanted, what was going to...
"It was me!" my train of thought was interrupted when, shocking, a scrawny Zabrak male came forward, claiming responsibility "She found out that I had some skill with droids, and she approached me. She ordered me to rig the excavator droid and make it go haywire, then it was like I lost control of my own body because all I could do was exactly what she wanted. Every thought became devoted to making that droid go haywire. By the time I came to my senses and regained control, the droid was already on its rampage, and she was long gone." he reported. So, the blue-skinned woman had found other accomplices to her plot. Doctor Pelto and I weren't the only ones. Once again, she was applying her power onto a contractor who doubled as a droid mechanic, someone who I would describe as a rather clever person with a diverse set of skills, but even he couldn't do anything when faced with her power. Whatever this is, it wasn't a mere Jedi Mind Trick, this was something a lot more powerful, and, dare I say, a lot more sinister. So sinister in fact that, as Amstrun stopped in front of this man, I realized he was going to take the brunt of the punishment for her actions.
"Well, well, well, it appears that we have our first lead. You are going to come with me boy, you are going to come to my office and tell me everything you can about this mysterious woman. Your actions may prove invaluable to the Imperial cause." Amstrun announced, ordering the stormtroopers to stand down and walking off to his office, with the Zabrak male reluctantly following, speeding up a bit once an Imperial blaster rifle shoved him forward, making it clear where exactly he was and what the stakes were here. I breathed a sigh of relief though, because the Imperials set us free without learning of my involvement, I survived today. I had plenty of unanswered questions though, especially to the woman who turned up, started flaunting her power, and plunged this base into chaos. That's assuming she ever comes back that is, because I have no idea what's on the surface of Taaszon, let alone why it's of any importance to her. I doubted the Zabrak boy knew much of anything either, he was just another contractor completely and utterly out of his league. Part of me wanted to help the kid, get him out of this situation, but really, what can I do? Standing up to Director Amstrun is a good way of getting myself killed right about now, not to mention the Zabrak. The best hope we both have of staying alive is that if he tells the Director everything he knows and if I stay out of this situation entirely.
Director Amstrun would soon call-in reinforcements from the planet surface, citing the three incidents that have occurred in the past week as the main threat to the Taaszon system. His counterparts did indeed send a gunship of Imperial stormtroopers to reinforce the garrison, as well as replacing the casualties, but in the back of that shuttle happened to be a stowaway. Specifically, the blue-skinned woman, who, are her brief excursion to the surface, returned to the situation. I had no idea what she did on the surface and why she came back, but after all the chaos she's caused, I finally built up the courage to confront her. I was the only one that knew about her and, somehow, had a way of at least partially resisting her mind control abilities, and even though I was well aware of the fact that this could end very, very badly, I still felt the need to confront her before she could ruin someone else's life.
"Hey, what happened with that Zabrak boy? He confessed to the Imperials, and nobody has seen him since. You got a man killed, you know." I pointed out as I entered the room I helped her find, seeing the blue-skinned woman staring out her viewport at the stars of the distant outer rim.
"He was a necessary pawn in a much larger game. I hope you know that I did not throw away his life callously or without remorse. The situation was simply such that I required assistance and he was the one who could provide it to me. If that led to his death, then let it be the latest sacrifice in our great mission." she explained without a second thought, dismissing the death with ease.
"Your great mission?" I asked, skeptically. It seemed she is a fanatic as well as some type of sorceress.
"You are asking questions which you are not prepared to have answered. You are an ordinary woman, Zaverra Ashtso, keep it that way, most people in your position do not have that luxury." she responded, once again playing up the mysterious angle, but not without revealing that she knew my name and assumed to know about my background. That meant that, in addition to her visible crimes, she has also broken into this station's records and extracted all of our information. I was about to retort when, without warning, red lasers filled the viewport and the station shook.
As is now tradition, we end on a cliffhanger.
Ciao everyone!