You've got to be kriffing joking!
Ashkhen tossed the datapad to the side and slumped back onto the bed. By decree of the new government, citizens of the First Galactic Empire were required to register for a new form of identification at an assigned office. She got her curt summons from the Imperial Office of Sentient Species. The subtext left a sour aftertaste.
"Tills, what d'you get?" Ashkhen shouted at her bedroom door.
A yawn and a subsequent thump on the couch came from the living room. Two mugs softly knocked on the tabletop.
"Bureau of Registration for Near-Humans and Humanoids," Tilla said.
"I guess not all tail-heads are created equal," Ashkhen muttered. A quick twist of a pinkie unstuck her left gill arch. She rolled out of the bed and waved the door open.
With a tip of her head, Tilla indicated the mug on the left, the one without blue milk. Ashkhen appreciated the kind, yet entirely useless gesture, as she could sniff out the difference through the closed bedroom door.
"Perhaps they drew the line at egg-laying?" Tilla mused.
Ashkhen plopped down onto the couch and set the Imperial HoloVision to mute with a flick of her fingers. There was only so much propaganda she could stomach before her first caf in the morning.
"Banthashit," she said, whipping her headtails over the backrest. She propped both feet, cocooned in fluffy wampa-wool socks, on the low table. Time and time again, Tilla's thoughtful Festival of Life gift had proven itself the perfect fit to counter heat loss through her webbed feet. "You're not human-passing any more than I do."
"You're saying that as if I'd want to!"
"You're not getting treated like the lower class neighbours who bring down the tone of the galaxy."
Ashkhen took a sip from her mug. The unfavorable attitude towards amphibious species in general—decided but unjust scorn—had been a constant source of annoyance throughout her life. She learned long ago that people would always judge first, and only a depressing minority would reassess later.
Evidently, the new regime adopted humanocentrism as one of its core principles. Less than a week after the Declaration of a New Order, Ashkhen was refused admission to her favourite topside park. Not because it was temporarily closed to the public—it was permanently closed to her, as so conveyed by the security guard's hands-on-hips posture and frown of disdain. A homogenous group of Human kindergarteners, fifty shades of ivory, toddled right in as she slowly backed off.
Later that afternoon, her caf order was made to-go without asking. The sandwich place she had been hitting up every other week suddenly ran out of bread. At least the kid standing behind the counter looked genuinely sorry and uncomfortable for lying about it. Ashkhen didn't blame him for valuing his job higher in the current state of the economy than his principles.
And that was just the glint of on top of an iceberg.
"Where is this IOSS anyways?" Tilla asked, yanking her attention from recent injustices and directing it to prospective injustices. "Never heard of it before."
"My guess would be right next to the Deportures at Coruscant Spaceport."
"Ever the optimist." Tilla stretched and headed towards the bathroom. Her empty mug was left behind on the table—Ashkhen often wondered if she secretly enjoyed having someone else collect her drinkware for a change. The shower started to run.
"Any passenger transports today?" Tilla shouted over the rushing water.
Ashkhen winced at her volume and the thought of the pipes carrying the conversation through the building.
"Only one, late at night," she said. "Tomorrow morning, technically." She opened the messages on her comlink and skimmed through them again. "My bank says I need to do an in-person authentication with my new chain code, otherwise my account won't be automatically converted into Imperial credits. Are you required to do that?"
"Umm… no?"
Ashkhen took the opportunity to flip the bird to the Emperor on the holoscreen, whose mouth was forming the silent words to a celebratory speech.
••• ••• •••
Non-Republic citizens going through the arrival gates at Coruscant Spaceport once had caused less of a bottleneck than the people deemed lower vertebrates waiting for their chain codes did. Ashkhen had the misfortune of waiting in line between a Wookie and a Trandoshan; whisper-shouted slurs bounced back and forth above her head in the pressure-cooker environment of eternal enmity. A throng of shock troopers positioned along the queue kept the motley crowd of non-humanoids on their best behaviour.
She took an infinitesimal step forward, inching past the next stanchion with the speed of a tectonic plate. The cruel joke that the designated queuing area actually snaked towards a wall of take-a-number terminals only hit her after turning the third corner formed by the holobarriers.
Go tell the Emperor, thou who passest by, at IOSS athropied Furball, Lizardface and I.
She spent another twenty-five minutes trying to dredge up the last few lines of the Wuthering Bights mantra. Lamentably, it had also joined the list of those that had long slipped her mind.
Just as she was about to launch into a shorter, rhymier one from her Initiate days, a door on the far right irised open, and a squad of stormtroopers marched in. The loud hiss of the Trandoshan's indrawn breath made Ashkhen look again. Behind them, purge troopers followed, clad in black armour, E-11D blaster carbines at the ready. Brief holoscreen appearances didn't do justice to the effect they had in person.
Faint blue light flickered behind the commander's visor as he flipped through a few screens on his HUD. His squad marched after him in perfect unison. They walked diagonally through the holobarrier maze, and the aliens parted like the ocean on a supertanker's bow.
Kriff me if it isn't about the Jedi stint.
As they approached, Ashkhen politely stood to the side to let them pass, but the squad made a sharp turn. Eight left boots slammed into the ground in the position of attention. There was no mistaking it.
"Ashkhen Dakiis?"
"Unfortunately," she exhaled.
"Follow me to Special Processing."
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Well aware that her eyes looked like one giant pupil to other species, Ashkhen blatantly abused the angle at which she peered up at her huge male neighbours in an attempt to appeal to their subconscious instincts to protect tiny females, but both of them were politely looking in different directions. As she stepped out to follow the commander, the Trandoshan closed the gap in the line.
Special Processing, as it turned out, was not kneeling down in a back alley as Ashkhen had expected, but took place in a smaller, windowless room with reinforced doors. Two of the purge troopers stood behind her chair, the other two stayed by either side of the entrance.
Oh, boy.
In a short while, an Imperial officer walked in followed by a droid, a model Ashkhen was unfamiliar with. It rolled right up to the desk and a small compartment lid slid down on its side. The officer took a bunch of cables, tubes and electrodes, then turned towards Ashkhen.
"Test subject three-eight-eight, following standard procedure."
"Wonder how randomized these screenings are," Ashkhen almost said, but thought it wiser to remain silent. When the officer finished taping the electrodes to her fingers and switched the droid's receiver on, the line shot off the chart.
"Haven't even asked anything yet." The officer's brows furrowed.
"It's tricky to get a heart rate reading of my species," Ashkhen said in a small voice. Worst kriffing crowd to lecture on body diversity. "You might want to, uh… toggle the settings a trifle."
"Indeed."
An endless list of questions—and cross-validating ones—followed, ranging from irrelevant details, like Ashkhen's foot size, to deeply personal ones, like her relationship with her family-by-blood.
"I haven't been in contact with them for over twenty years," she said. "Are they… okay?"
'Okay' tasted weird in her mouth. Glee Anselm had been one of the last planets to be touched by the war not a week before, she had seen its seas run red with the blood of the fallen. Then happened the lockdown in the shelter, then Order 66… Ashkhen hadn't really had the chance to sort out her feelings about the Dakiises' potential demise.
The officer looked up from his datapad, eyes narrowing. He skipped to the next topic without giving her family's fate a second thought.
"Has any member of the Jedi Order tried to contact you since Order 66 was issued?"
Morrdul, the holocrons and Jedi artefacts, stashing them in the very same spaces she had found Fong's stuff, and sewing one of the lightsabers into the lining of her go-bag flashed across her mind.
The purge troopers' grip tightened around their electrostaves. Ashkhen looked the officer straight in the eyes and said in a bored voice,
"No."
In stark contrast with the real Mind Probe she had undergone once, Ashkhen found tricking the droid embarrassingly easy.
"In the event of that happening, would you report it to the Imperial Intelligence?"
"Yes."
A barely noticeable disappointment rolled off the purge troopers. Had they been expecting trouble? Resisting? Her belting out 'For my Brothers and Sisters!' and igniting a lightsaber?
The officer indicated she could remove the electrodes, then typed a few lines into the terminal. A datachit slid across the table shortly after.
"Your chain code."
Ashkhen picked it up. "Why does it start with letters?"
"Those indicate the threat ranking. No one in the Galactic Empire cares for surprises, least of all security personnel."
Like as if it turned out my Jediitis was only in remission!?
"That's"—Ashkhen swallowed back a kriffing banthashit—"a reasonable precaution."
The officer stood and nodded at the purge troopers.
"We're done here. Have a good day."
Ashkhen spent the trip to the bank weighing whether it would be justifiable to pawn one of Morrdul's kyber crystals on the black market and fund her own disappearing act.
••• ••• •••
"Kriffing what!?"
Imos's t'bac case and lighter zipped over his desk and landed in Ashkhen's grasp. Two eye-watering drags later she folded her arms, heedless of the ashes falling onto the carpet. Imos watched his remaining smokes float back, clutching the left breast of the gaudy naked Zeltron statue by his desk as though he was afraid it would start to sag.
"You've got to understand, Ash, we're barely treading water as it is."
"I don't think you realize how stupid that metaphor sounds to me," Ashkhen said. "So Rix, who is a reptile, gets to stay because you can have her look like a hairy kriffing ape, but you have to let me go because I wasn't brought earthside in an amnion?"
"For the record, this doesn't line up with my personal beliefs. You know I love you and every other—"
"Say alien and I'll punch your words back into your mouth."
Imos's hand twitched—a panic button had been set into the Zeltron's nipple. As his unease blossomed into genuine fear, Ashkhen's gaze shifted to the t'bac in her hand. She let its red hot tip slowly smoulder out.
"This has got nothing to do with me being Nautolan."
Imos looked away. "I'm sure you must be on some list," he said quietly.
The cold shock of spurn sucked the air out of her lungs. "It's been years since I—"
In that moment, Ashkhen understood that not a single soul in the Galaxy would ever care what it was like to come to terms with the fact that she'd never fit in. What it took to walk away, to forge her own path out of lostness and to search for her own peace.
Fear leads to anger.
In that moment, Ashkhen finally grasped the true meaning of the adage. Imos's fear, the society's fear, the fear of the Emperor himself awakened a slowly burning wrath that engulfed her fragile peace and threatened to destroy it.
Anger leads to hate.
A heavy, dark, cold emptiness took over her soul, encouraging her to embrace more and more of it, to sink deeper and deeper into it. She detested Imos's cowardice, the corruption responsible for Master Balian's death, and the new regime that had left upon her the stigma. Life itself shrank as focused, abject hate took root where compassion had once sprung from.
Hate leads to suffering.
Ashkhen, terrified witless of such an explosive and violent pervasion of Darkness, stubbed the t'bac out in Imos's ashtray and left without a word.
••• ••• •••
By the time Castas finally showed up, Ashkhen was proper shitfaced.
The opposite seat creaked under his impressive weight. Ashkhen raised her face from the table and waved at him, catching an empty glass with her hand and toppling it over. Castas placed it on top of a busser droid's tray, then eased into his habitual reticence. After a long while of waiting for Ashkhen to say something, he, most uncharacteristically, started the conversation.
"Somethin' happened?"
Ashkhen threw herself back in her seat and pried one eye open. "Watched the kriffing news lately?"
Castas took his sweet time waving down a server droid, ordering his usual, waiting for the droid to come back with it, then taking a sip.
"You left them."
Ashkhen pulled her bottle closer and took another swig. "No one gives a shit. Got my new chain code, and now I can't even look in the direction of Coruscant Spaceport without getting strip searched. Oh, and Imos fired me."
"Hm."
With Castas keeping her company, the absurd idea of doing shots struck Ashkhen. She found a wonderful listener in him, who, silent and steady, raised his glass to hers whenever she proposed a toast to the Emperor's kneecaps, to the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new to outcasts and pariahs, to brainwashing and to a government of fear. Her speech slurred, then disintegrated into a fitful rambling. Castas chimed in with monosyllables from time to time, neither agreeing nor arguing with her spasmodic and transitory thoughts. Ashkhen soon looped back to the Jedi again.
"They're gone, Cas! Everyone!" Tears flowed free by now. "The only people I ever knew as family, the only place I ever called home!"
A vague sense of attention nudged what was left of her awareness. Snoop? Ashkhen tried focusing behind Castas, only to realize they were sitting in his favourite corner booth, him with his back to the wall. Ashkhen threw a glance over her shoulder—the alcohol-induced nearsightedness had already rendered the crowd a blur.
"Yeah, they kicked me out. I mean, I left them. We left each other. Whatever. Didn't see eye to eye on everything, but they were good people, Cas! They stood for peace! Or… I don't know, whatever the kriff they believed peace was."
Through the hubbub, through the haze, through the bitterness and sorrow, Ashkhen noticed Castas's good eye following someone. Elbow on the table, she dropped her head into her hand. Too tired to care. Whoever the kriff wanted to listen in to the impromptu eulogy, let them.
"Who won, Castas? Tell me, who won the kriffing war? 'Cause it's sure as shit the Republic didn't! I'll tell you what happened, everyone but the Emperor had lost. He's gotten rid of all his enemies in a day! And in what a spectacular fashion! Mass media coverage of all the executions!
"Yes, the Order had lost sight of its original purpose and strayed far. Many were corrupted by power, but I refuse to accept that a safe and secure society starts with slaughtering children!"
People sitting in the neighbouring booth turned their heads. Ashkhen stared them down until they turned back.
"Who claims they'll guide their people through chaos by first snuffing the light?"
Castas hmphed. The din of Moshi, a desperate noise of a hundred sad souls running away from their troubles, pressed against Ashkhen's temples and throbbed in her ears. Her head lolled forward. Thoughts trudged around in her mind in aimless depression. What felt like hours later, she blinked to sharpen the blurred image. Tufts of loose threads stuck up along the edge of a small tear on her knee. Ashkhen sunk into the comfortable irrelevance of contemplating her own trousers.
"There's a list."
"Huh?" Ashkhen struggled to bring Castas's face into focus, despite him sitting right across the table.
Castas half turned towards the bar. He pointed at the jukebox, then lifted his palm flat up. Boom, boom, boom—the bartender cranked it up, the volume of the music completely drowned out Castas's voice. His mouth formed a word that her mind refused to accept.
Survivors.
Ashkhen grabbed a bottle from the table. It was empty, which she only registered a little while later. Castas offered his own. His features didn't let on, but his aura bespoke his amusement. Was he baiting her? It both irritated and galvanized her at the same time. Kriff him. Kriff the dead, kriff the living and everyone in between.
The blaring music, the stuffy air, the alcohol overload finally got to her. The inside of Moshi got as unbearable as the inside of her skull. The urge to flee had Ashkhen push herself upright, but her feet got caught in the table leg then the floor racked her with an uppercut.