Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Only the rhythmic thumps of Ashkhen banging her head back against the dull grey wall broke the dull grey silence of the room, a sound somewhat muffled by her dull grey headtails.
The sole other occupant of the holding cell, a human lady in her late sixties, had long fallen asleep. Seven different languages between the pair of them—including Ashkhen's rudimentary signing—yet none were spoken mutually. A few cordial smiles and awkward nods later, the lady had given up on further attempts at small talk and curled up on the bench with her heavily tattooed back towards the room.
Never should have agreed to Obrim's stupid plan!
Nothing in the cell indicated the passage of time. The guards stationed on the corridor were all GU-series droids, they never changed shifts. The old lady's extremely erratic apnea patterns made her sleep cycles impossible to follow. And, embarrassingly enough, Ashkhen had messed up the words in the Flux mantra twice, leaving her with yet another unreliable method of measuring time. If she were to give a ballpark range, she would have guessed somewhere between three hours and an eternity.
Her gaze fell onto the bench. An intricate pattern of overlapping scratch-tags had been wrought into its surface. 'YOUR NEXT,' read the biggest one in crude letters. Ashkhen lacked the claws, horns, fangs or spikes to fix the spelling, so she instinctively reached for the folding knife she kept tucked in her right boot—only to remember it had been confiscated upon arrest. She leaned back against the wall, and resumed the highly unentertaining mental exercise of counting floor tiles.
At long last, the sound of approaching footsteps drew her attention. Combat boots. Someone strode towards the cell with the air of people who had very important things to do and nearly not enough time.
"Access to holding cell Enth four seven."
The force field disappeared at Lieutenant Doushan's voice command, and he walked in without breaking his stride. Ashkhen looked over at the old lady to reaffirm she was still asleep, then at a flick of her fingers, her handcuffs dropped to the floor.
"Was that really necessary?"
"I needed the intel and you got me the intel." Doushan turned back towards the door with a follow-me jerk of his head.
Ashkhen tagged after him down the corridor, glancing left and right at the holding cells, nary a cubicle unoccupied. She kept her voice down. "It felt wrong."
"I'm sorry about your feelings, but two sights I've never seen in my life are a cute womprat and a principled defense attorney." He turned a corner and headed towards the reinforced double leaf door at the end of the hall. "Lucky you got here before we could have honoured her right to counsel."
Ashkhen followed him in silence. The vapour of Tassal Albot's confusion and fear kept her company still, stuck to her skin, in her nose, wedged between her conscience and sense of self-preservation.
"What did you do to me!? What did you do!?"
Ashkhen struggled to expel the image of guards dragging away the young offender from her mind. She had compelled Albot to scoot down the bench so the security camera would have an unobstructed view of her. She also made her state her full name, ID number and address in a clear voice, then asked her the questions Doushan had previously ordered her to. And considering how gangs in prisons operated, she had also, inadvertently, signed her death warrant.
"Jedi aren't supposed to use their powers like that."
"Good thing you're not one." Doushan opened his office door and motioned Ashkhen inside. He walked over to his desk, rummaged through the top drawer, then tossed a card, similar to his own, to Ashkhen. "Your new ID is ready."
Ashkhen turned over the token. "Spiritual Counsel?" She looked up with a frown.
"Security clearance for the entire detention area, plus I don't have to fake-arrest you every time I need someone's brains picked."
"You would have me do this again!?"
"Oh, I can't force"—Doushan used air quotes—"you to cooperate with the investigation. I would, however, direct your attention to the fact that you are technically still under arrest."
"You texted me and I walked in through the front door!"
"So, it's a no, then?" The Lieutenant held out his open hand for the ID. "I'll have you escorted back in a minute. I'm sure your seat is still warm."
Ashkhen, teeth clenched tight, admitted to defeat by pocketing it.
"The Captain will be here in one minute," he continued, and pointed at the settee abutting the wall. "Sit. And don't touch anything."
Ashkhen fought back the urge to move his chair as the Detective sat and began working on his reports. She plopped down on the worn leather couch—the puff of air her weight expelled from it confirmed that Doushan spent at least equal, if not more time sleeping on it than in his bed.
Sitting, waiting and being miserable, Ashkhen summed up the police experience. And so she sat, waited and felt miserable.
"Good show, everybody!"
In about forty-five of those one minutes, Captain Obrim walked in with a wide smile on his face. He looked Ashkhen up and down—the cold, calculating gleam in his eyes made her more uncomfortable than sitting in the ever so slowly dissipating cloud of Doushan's dead skin particles did.
"I know that look, Captain, and I don't like it," Doushan voiced his concerns, arms folded tightly across his chest. Ashkhen silently agreed with him.
Obrim ignored the Lieutenant. He strode across the room to the holoterminal, connected his datapad and pulled up a swathe of documents.
"Are you ready for a little adventure?" he called over his shoulder as he swiped and pulled and waved his hand, arranging the profiles in something resembling a flowchart.
And here I thought crazy walls were just a trope.
"Those files are not for civilian eyes, Captain." Doushan put heavy stress on the word civilian. Like oil and vinegar, two awkward undertones separated in his tone—reprimand and warning.
Doushan's gonna kill me the moment Obrim walks out that door.
Captain Obrim went on unfazed. "Firearms Intelligence confirmed the batch number on the blaster Ms. Albot carried. Baktoid. Now we have to find out whether it came through the same channel."
Like a conductor, he raised both hands and rearranged the timeline on holoprojector. A familiar face flickered up then faded into the background. The mugshot backdrop only further emphasised the unnatural protrusion of Sel Miett's lower jawbone.
"Luckily, we were able to incentivise"—he nodded in Ashkhen's direction over his shoulder—"Ms. Albot to give up her retailer."
His left drew a half circle in the air, and a new hologram floated into the middle. The shot had been captured through a speeder's windshield—the man's dark hair brushed against the headliner, his neck could have passed as a torso on an average male, and arms looked like separate people attached to his shoulders. Ashkhen wisely kept her concerns about human-rancor interbreedability to herself.
"Boster Reyden, unaffiliated mercenary and small time criminal," Captain Obrim said.
Doushan's mouth curled downward. "I didn't believe when I heard Albot say it and I don't believe it now. Reyden has been planetside for at least a year. He can't be behind all this."
"Oh, he's but our next link on a long chain of distributors. However, unlike the source, we know where he can be found."
"Should I drop Judge Nouf a line? We'll need a warrant, Captain, won't we?"
Obrim shook his head, slowly turning around. Ashkhen looked left and right and over her shoulder. One greasy spot marked the wall behind her, where the Lieutenant habitually rested his head. She turned back and locked eyes with the Captain.
You can't be serious!
"No." Doushan unfolded his arms and slowly stood. He gripped the edge of his desk so hard that the plastoid edge trim nearly cracked. "No, no, no and no."
"We're understaffed and overworked," Obrim said. "Whom would you send?"
The Lieutenant threw his arms up. "Literally anybody else!?"
"This is but outsourcing some legwork," Obrim brushed his objection aside. "I'm confident she won't have any trouble finding out who Reyden's wholesaler is. All in favour?" He raised his right.
"Kriffing NAY!" came the response in chorus.
"Great, it's settled then." Obrim nodded to himself, then marched out the door.
Doushan pinched the bridge of his nose. "You heard him. Go!"
Morrdul's gonna kill me the moment he learns of this!
••• ••• •••
"So, like, what's in the box?"
Buyan crossed her long legs, a movement caught in a luxurious shimmer of fabric. She had been eyeing the box in Ashkhen's hand the entire air cab ride without her noticing—the heavily mascara'd bristles the Twi'lek had glued on made it impossible to tell where her gaze went. Neat trick, if a little cumbersome.
"Doughnuts," Ashkhen said.
A slight gust of wind hit her face in the wake of Buyan's confused blinking. Surely, a hurricane would soon strike somewhere on the southern hemisphere of Coruscant.
"I'm low-key surprised you've like, a food kink."
"No, I don't!" Ashkhen balked at the suggestion. "I'm only gonna ask a few questions, and that's it. This is just a… a gesture, a thanks-for-helping."
"…rrright." Buyan re-crossed her legs with a chuckle, making Ashkhen lean back into her seat to get her eyes as far away as possible from the stiletto heels slicing through the air. "You Jedi are so freaky."
"Literally every part of that sentence is incorrect. I'm neither."
"Okay, whatever." She threw one lekku over her shoulder, lit up and took a long drag. The white cloud she blew out against the viewport momentarily blurred the city lights. "Maybe it's just the ones I met."
Ashkhen nearly dropped the box.
Plural!?
"You must be mistaken!"
Buyan arched an eyebrow. "Come on, Old Republic style threads, bowing, waving hands, master-of-the-universe smiles and spewing one cryptic cone after another?"
"Not cone, koan." Ashkhen frowned. Jedi did do those, but never all at once in such a suspiciously theatrical fashion. "Did they, uh… insist you had to do it… uh, them, for free?"
"Du-uh! May the Force repay you abundantly?" Buyan gave her a meaningful look. "Like I'd pass on good juju."
Ashkhen's face twitched with supressed aggravation. "You can't rub a Jedi for good luck, that's not how it works. I'm sorry you got scammed."
Buyan sat in silence for a moment. The superslim at the end of her long t'bac holder smouldered with a furious glow.
"What are you doing tomorrow night?" she asked.
A smile slowly spread across Ashkhen's face. "Teaching phoneys a thing or two about the Force."
As redoubtable as she found Buyan upon first meeting, Tilla's roommate really started to grow on her.
Buyan had agreed to take Ashkhen to the infamous invitation-only Velvet, the nightclub Reyden frequented according to Albot's testimony. In exchange, the Twi'lek wanted her own back scratched first: hitting up the bilker from two nights ago. Ashkhen happily agreed to help and assume the role of mediator, but Buyan had something else in mind. She wanted to make him pay.
When the pair of them had arrived at the same bar Buyan and the guy met, he cracked a lame joke about having taken her for a ride, then laughed at the sight of Ashkhen in the capacity of hired muscle. His words of ridicule quickly turned into incomprehensible gibberish when he crashed through the plexiglass panel of the window, several hundred meters worth of space opened up beneath his dangling feet, and his wallet floated out of his pocket. Buyan only showed mercy when a stain ran down his left leg and his extremities began to spasm. Ashkhen gently set him down on a narrow catwalk between two industrial mezzanines, spanning over the chasm that went all the way down to Level 2000-something. Maintenance droids should have gotten him in a short while.
Right up until this point, Ashkhen had kept ruminating over whether using her powers to intimidate someone—which was a bad thing—to help someone else stand up for themselves—which was a good thing—and extort money—again, bad thing—that was duly owed—probably good—for prostitution—sort of a grey area—ultimately tipped the scale in the good or bad direction. Something told her this was not a question Master Balian would have been enthused to discuss.
••• ••• •••
Ashkhen stood in front of the reception counter at the Velvet, ever so vigilant as to not touch any surfaces. Every square centimetre of the hall was covered in dark red synthetic plush—kitschy and entirely too on-the-nose in her opinion, but definitely easier to remove stains from than its genuine silk cousin.
A base note of oud punched up into her nose—Ange Déchu by Djaen, a perfume so intense that Ashkhen assumed its use in a large scale attack against the Nautolan Navy would constitute a war crime. The beaded curtain parted with a soft tinkle, and a bust of comical proportions appeared behind the receptionist desk.
"Welcome!" the recipient of the most egregious boob job purred, leaning forward with her elbows on the counter. A combination of long years of heavy smoking and her breasts pushing her thyroid gland up into her throat made her voice unnaturally deep and husky.
Ashkhen snapped out of speculating whether the implants would make her float or sink and, with a surprisingly great effort, made eye contact.
"I'm looking for Adventure."
"And adventure you shall have," the receptionist said.
Ashkhen's mouth twitched. "No, I meant the girl who goes by 'Adventure', I don't know her real name."
"No one does, darling!" Her modulated tittle hit all the right notes, she landed an oh-you tap on Ashkhen's arm, and dilated her pupils on cue—had the makeshift detective been capable of thermoregulation, her cheeks would have flushed. The receptionist turned her attention to her terminal. "I'll see if she's available. What's that?" she asked, nodding at the box.
"Just doughnuts."
She switched to a business tone in the blink of a rhinestone-studded eye. "Food play incurs a cleaning fee of eighty credits."
Ashkhen slowly exhaled. "They won't end up anywhere they're not supposed to, I promise."
The receptionist typed another few words, then gestured towards the double leaf door beyond her station. The romboid pattern on its panels split down the middle, eliciting an eye-roll on Ashkhen's part. She soon got over the overarching theme of the place and started pondering the options of getting back in a second time, undetected.
Cameras pointed at the main entrance and the receptionist's desk. Another one was mounted looking down the corridor, one had the elevator to the VIP lounge in view. A pair of sentient bouncers stood by either side of the elevator doors. The back office and storage area were sealed off from the main floor.
This place is tighter than expected, Ashkhen thought, making herself silently gag at the unintended pun.
The receptionist flourished a hand at the door. "Your Adventure awaits," she said, backing away with an enigmatic smile. "Your safe word is 'doughnut'," she added in a hushed tone.
As Ashkhen stood under the photocell sensor to open the door, a 'Doushan' could be heard somewhere in the whispered string of Sriluurian curses.
The girl sprawling on the bed glanced up with a thirsty, lovestruck look on her very young and conventionally pretty face. The thick layer of cakey makeup obscured her age—Ashkhen's eyes shifted to her soft, pudgy hands. Adventure slid off the covers and sashayed towards Ashkhen with such practiced ardour that she dropped into a guard stance, hands raised to eye-level.
Shit, these people are good!
"I'm not here for this, uh… this"—her gaze swept across the room—"I just want to talk to you, okay?"
Adventure stopped in her tracks, looking about as confident as if Ashkhen had suggested a pop game of Guess the Solar System.
"Am I in touble?"
With such a netherwards life-trajectory?
Ashkhen pulled up her friendliest smile and led her back to the edge of the bed. "Listen, Addy—can I call you Addy?—just sit down, okay? You can put on some clothes if you want." She put the doughnuts down between them and pushed them across. "Those are for you. We're just gonna hang out a bit, hm?"
Confectionery was seldom on the menu for Addy. As she opened the box, her entire aura lit up with joy befitting her true age. She held up a doughnut and gave Ashkhen an impish wink through the hole.
"What are they laced with?"
Ashkhen buried her face in her hands. "They're just regular kriffing doughnuts!"
She took a centering breath, then looked up—Addy's mouth was already full.
"I'm looking for a guy named Reyden. Big dude, black hair. He comes around often, right?"
Addy nodded.
"What can you tell me about him?"
The bite went down with a gulp. "Well, he likes it when I—"
"Oookay"—Ashkhen thew her hands up—"that was my fault. What I meant was, when does he usually show up? Do you know what kind of speeder he drives? Has he any weapons? Things like that."
"Right, umm…" Addy's eyes turned upwards with deep concentration as though the answers were written on the ceiling. Ashkhen followed her gaze, and locked eyes with her own self looking up—down—from the giant mirror above the bed. She shuddered.
"Boster books me every weekend, usually both nights. Never stays the night, just comes and goes.
Luckily, the accidental double entendre went way over Addy's head—Ashkhen shepherded the focus forward without batting an eye.
"What about his ride? Do you know what he drives?"
"His speeder is, umm, red. He'd shown me pictures."
Something in Ashkhen's expression must have prompted Addy to try and be a little more helpful, for she added with a serious nod, "It's super fast, too, he said."
Ashkhen didn't push the question of makes and vintages. The chances of getting a plate number out of her seemed astronomical, so she dropped the speeder issue entirely.
"What about weapons? Have you seen any?"
"No." However swift to reply, Addy didn't sound too confident. "I dunno, maybe? All weapons have to be deposited before entering, so, I've no idea."
Ashkhen licked her lips, then switched to the tone she would have used to explain to a Youngling why running with ignited lightsabers was a bad idea. "Let's put our heads together and do a little deduction. When he comes in, does he have an empty holster on his belt?"
Addy's deep concentration did interesting things to the layer of foundation on her forehead. It took her a record ten seconds to make the connection—her mouth slightly opened when the light bulb went on in her head.
"Oh, my gosh, he does!"
"You're doing great, Addy!" Her praise elicited an excited little hand flapping. "One last thing." Ashkhen pulled out a comlink and set it down next to the empty box. "The next time he shows up, can you call me?"
Addy licked the glaze off her fingers. "You wanna watch?"
"Stars, no!" Ashkhen stood to leave. "I want to talk to him, too. Will you help me?"
Addy closed the empty doughnut box and gave the departing Nautolan a warm smile.
"These were really good."
••• ••• •••
Addy delivered. Three days later, Ashkhen walked through the entrance of the Velvet once again, this time wearing a maintenance jumpsuit and accompanied by a BLX-series repair droid. The receptionist waved her right inside without as much as looking up from her screen, and let the droid plug in to the socket by her knees.
Instead of going through the birth experience door, she headed for the service corridor running parallel to the one with the security guards. Her footsteps sounded surprisingly loud on the hallway's unassuming duracrete flooring.
The sign on the first door to the right read 'checkroom'. Ashkhen walked in without knocking, announcing her presence with a loud bubblegum pop.
"System maintenance." Chewing some more, she pulled out her datapad. "I need to use your terminal."
The guard looked her up and down, unconvinced. "On a weekend night? Who scheduled that?"
"Hm." A deep furrow appeared on Ashkhen's forehead as she checked the datapad in her hand. The chewing stopped for a moment.
The light fixtures flickered, and the twenty-something locker doors flew open at once. The guard swivelled around in his chair, reaching towards his belt.
"What the—?"
"Huh." Ashkhen shrugged, and put the datapad away. "Must've been a mixup. Weird."
The guard pushed his whole weight against the closest locker door, but it wouldn't budge. The irregular activity triggered safety lockdown measures, but instead of closed, the doors were jammed open, shamelessly putting their contents on display. He swore and struggled some more, testing his strength against the locking mechanism.
Ashkhen looked on with the same excitement as she would have watching granite slug slime dribble off a wall. The guard's distress began to crescendo—the chewing gum expanded into a bubble large enough to cover her face from chin to nose—then she turned towards the door.
"Wait! You're a techie, right? Can't you fix this?"
Pop! A shrug.
"Close the tab you should have never opened on the company network, and I'll see what I can do."
The guard's thumb and pinkie hit a key combination.
That many tabs!?
As Ashkhen circled around his desk, she shot a casual glance at the lockers. Guests were alarmingly strapped.
She took the guard's seat without asking. Lock screen was on. She barely glanced at the keyboard as she typed in his password.
"You a"—he cleared his throat—"slicer?"
Ashkhen pressed restart and booted in recovery mode. "Keys one through four have smudged off," she said. Pop! "At least reverse the order."
The guard mumbled something about checking in with the other shifts.
Pop! Ashkhen methodically overwhelmed him with a torrent of technical doublespeak while she set the datapad on the desk and pulled a jumble of cables from a pocket. With a little pulling and tugging, the cable untangled—she plugged one end into her own device and the other into the terminal for absolutely no reason besides dramatics.
"I'm gonna need someone to authorize resetting the system. Don't s'pose you've root access?" She tilted her head to the side.
"No, the uh, head operator does."
"Fetch him?"
The guard hesitated. Ashkhen slowly lifted two fingers off the keyboard.
"You can leave me here."
He nodded, and turned towards the door. "You keep working on that, okay? I'll be right back."
Ashkhen watched him leave, then set herself to work.
Customer logs… B. Reyden. Locker Esk-twenty one.
The empty chair slowly swivelled a full circle—Ashkhen already stood in front of locker E21, his blaster in her hand.
Baktoid Armor Workshop.
She turned the rifle over, looked through the scope and folded out the extendable stock. Sleek design. Fought hard against the urge to break it apart with the Force, or at least stick the chewing gum into its barrel. She checked its serial number once more, put it back and returned to the terminal.
Layout… Security feed… Rooms and personnel… There you are.
The guard's footsteps, now followed by the shuffling of a second pair of feet, grew louder as he approached the door.
Damn!
Ashkhen's arm shot out, and the locker doors swung shut just before the security guard and the operator entered.
"You can't jack your own shit into the system!" the latter said when he took in the scene.
"Shouldn't have been able to." The cable and the datapad disappeared in one of the jumpsuit's pockets. "The door bug is gone. Would have been awkward if that happened in front of the guests."
Offering one loud pop! as goodbye, Ashkhen left the pair of them. She only hastened when the door closed behind her, in case they snapped out of it and decided to follow.
The service corridor led deep into the facility. Ashkhen followed her mental map and counted the doors left and right. In twenty meters or so, she crouched down to squeeze through the plumbing assist unit-sized maintenance hatch and emerged into the guest bathroom. She hid the jumpsuit in a cubicle, wrapped the chewing gum in a piece of paper and properly disposed of it, then and walked out the door with an air of belonging.
The two bouncers she had bypassed didn't even glance in her direction.
Another four booths down the corridor—thank the Force for soundproofing—she found the one Addy occupied for the night. They had agreed on a secret knock sequence of three taps, for Ashkhen doubted Addy could have remembered anything more complex.
The door opened to reveal Addy, this time garbed in the lingerified version of a police uniform. Ashkhen would have paid to see Doushan's expression when he was forced to acknowledge the existence of a sexy rendition of his official apparel.
Addy grabbed her hand and pulled her inside, quickly closing the door behind Ashkhen.
"I kinda made him believe this was a game, so, like, can you play along?"
Bracing herself for the worst, Ashkhen glanced into the room over Addy's shoulder, and her jaw dropped. Reyden sat in a chair—with his clothes still on, thank the Force—facing the opposite wall, bound and with a black bag over his head, a faint tuts-tuts of synthpop coming from his headphones.
"Aye, aye, Chief General of the Supreme Overlords," she said, barely suppressing a grin.
"Overwhat?"
Ashkhen pointed at Addy's shoulder. "Your insignia. There's no corresponding rank for that many stars in real life."
"Oh, these came on a separate sheet." Addy plucked one off and pasted it onto Ashkhen's shirt. "So sparkly! I loved it, so I pinned them all on."
The on-the-spot promoted Brigadier Dakiis took a few steps inside.
"That is amazing ropework!" she said, admiring the knots down the back of his chair and on his armrests. "Where did you learn all this?"
"Oh, you know…" Addy shrugged. "Picked up mostly while trying to get out of these. Some guys' don't bother taking them off once they're, you know, done."
Ashkhen wished whoever found that funny would one day find a noose, as snug as Addy's handiwork, around his neck. "You should consider a career in rigging."
"Is that…?"
"Sailing ships. Less CO2 emission, less marine disturbance, and they look a lot cooler than motor ships."
"I can't swim."
"One day, maybe." Ashkhen circled around Reyden's chair. "Ready?"
Addy stood behind Reyden and removed the headphones and bag with one swift tug. He squinted up at Ashkhen.
"Lemme guess: the good cop?"
"No, the efficient one." She put one hand on his shoulder and looked deep into his red-rimmed eyes. "Where did you get your blaster?"
Reyden's facial muscles sagged a little. "At the track… run by… Ismon Casik."
Casik's name had popped up in conversations at Irigo's before. The exact location of his swoop track however, was unknown to Ashkhen. Doushan, or the guys at Intelligence would probably have something to go on.
"Did Casik sell it to you?"
"No… some new guy." His eyes wandered towards Addy. "He handles some business that isn't above board."
Ashkhen wondered how would Casik classify his own illegal sporting and gambling venue.
"Name?"
"Boster Reyden."
Ashkhen dropped her head with a sigh. It was a delicate balance between simplicity and specificity while using Mind Tricks.
"Let's try again. Who sold you the blaster?"
"I don't know his name. Weequay guy. Tal Tezzir introduced him."
The name didn't ring any bells. Ashkhen hoped Intelligence would have a file ready on him—or her.
"One last thing." She leaned even closer. "Remember: Batika's Cake 'n' More. The custard filled doughnuts are Addy's favourites."
Reyden nodded.
Ashkhen slowly withdrew the influence, already planning the next move.