Private Aegrescit Medendo

[Smeg]

SMEG'Z KLINIK

The words were spray-painted above the door in dripping red Aurebesh.

If one looked closely enough, behind the questionable spelling expected of the education received in Coruscant's filthy underbelly, they would have found a different sign. The last tenant's old neon tubing, something about dentistry. Very occasionally, the old sign found a flicker of a will to live and attempted to blush an electric blue before dying swiftly. A little pizzazz. Some razzle dazzle that brought the whole thing together into a perfectly questionable package. Lower down, at the precise height of an anthropomorphic rodent, was a painted smiley face and a red cross, although red was no longer the correct colour; it was more of a rusted brown. Nothing that couldn't be touched up later.

"Iz not lookingz gud," Doctor Smeg said forlornly, standing on a stool in front of a sink in his surgery as he washed his paws. The water dribbling out of the tap was a concerning shade of brown, but the Skraal didn't notice; he was too busy being fastidious about hand washing. That was a big part of what being a doctor was about, after all; he knew because he had seen it, and he also knew because he was, of course, a doctor. "Smeg'z feshinal 'pinion iz dat da foot haz to go."

The Abyssin in the dentist's doctor's chair, Boluk, blinked slowly with his single eye and then grunted. It seemed agreeable, which was appreciated; Smeg found that his patients faced with amputation often wanted a second opinion. However, since second opinions tended to cost a not-insignificant amount of credits, usually they had to accept the first. Well, that or pay for an alternative treatment, which cost at least two sandwiches and a pastry.

Apparently, the hulking cyclops had gone over his ankle on uneven ground outside LAST RESOR, an unsavoury cantina and had experienced a not-insignificant amount of pain, and also something had popped. Popping sounds were never good. Bodies were not meant to pop. Of course, ever the good doctor, Smeg had listened and triaged appropriately.

The entire foot and the ankle would have to go.

Boluk had, as any respectable patient should, paid upfront with one small loaf and a jogan fruit. It may have been a factor in getting him seen to first, and leaving the bleeding, fading Gamorrean with a hunk of rebar through his shoulder slumped over in the waiting room. As a doctor, Smeg understood that sleep was restorative, so he had made the professional decision to see to the Abyssin first. The fact that the Gamorrean had only brought nutriment paste as payment was also considered.

The Skraal hopped off of his stool and approached the chair, his very official doctor's coat trailing behind him for a good few feet. The glow panel overhead dimmed for a second, and the extractor fan, which provided much-needed struggling ambience, choked for a second before continuing its rattling song.

"Haz you gotz any questionz?" Doctor Smeg asked, his pink tail (which protruded from a purposely made hole in the coat) reaching up to the instrument tray to grab the Numbspray while his rodent paws clasped together.

"Nah. All good, doctor, go fer it," Boluk replied in his heavy accent, his three-fingered hands laced together and lying across his belly, entirely at ease with the procedure. Smeg's black, beady eyes practically gleamed as the word 'doctor' was growled from green lips.

"Anyfing you iz 'lergic to?"

Important to ask, you know.

"Nope."

"Eggzellent!" Smeg announced as his tail passed the Numbspray to his paw and the extremely liberal application of local anaesthetic began. As an experienced doctor, Smeg didn't need to measure precise amounts. A master chef knew exactly how much spice to add to the stew, as did he know the exact amount of Numbspray to use. Which was lots. After some time, and a good amount of pinching to check how much feeling the Abyssin had, he was ready to begin.

The Skraal hopped up onto the chair, climbing onto Boluk and using his tail to trade the spray for the tourniquet, which Smeg promptly placed in his mouth while he rolled up Boluk's shoes with his hands, and his tail swung the overhead lamp around for better light.

Outside, in the waiting room separated only by a curtain, the rebar-penetrated Gamorrean who sat in a chair ripped out of public transport remained slumped forward. The room was still for a moment. The heavy smell of antiseptic lingered, drifting amongst the many, many posters of teeth on the wall. Pictures of good teeth. Pictures of bad teeth. Pictures of gleaming, smiling teeth owned by a cast of diverse faces. Teeth as far as the eye could see. Teeth for days. All basked in the pink and cyan neon lights from the noodle stall across the narrow backstreet.

Then a great, heavy snore ripped out of the large pig.

He was fine. Smeg knew he would be. Smeg was a great doctor.

 

[Pax Velloran]

Smeg'z Klinik | Coruscant, Lower Levels

Slums | Smeg

Coruscant had a way of making everything look temporary beneath the upper levels.

Buildings lasted centuries. Families lasted less. Businesses changed names whenever the debts became inconvenient, signs were painted over instead of removed, and entire lives disappeared beneath layers of neon, grime, and somebody else's advertisements. The deeper one went, the more the city seemed content to let the past remain visible around the edges.

Pax stopped beneath a red sign that had apparently been applied with considerably more enthusiasm than precision.

SMEG'Z KLINIK.

Behind it, half-obscured by paint and years of neglect, an older arrangement of tubing occasionally threatened to illuminate something about dentistry. One letter managed a weak blue flicker before surrendering again. Pax looked from the sign to the entrance.

"Yeah, this tracks."

Three days earlier, Corven Daal had sent him a message containing eight words.

Found something strange. You still paying for manifests?

Pax had answered nine minutes later. He hadn't heard from Daal since.

That alone wouldn't ordinarily have warranted the trip. Daal was a freight tallyman who picked up contracts wherever somebody needed cargo counted without asking too many questions about what was inside it. He drank too much, gambled badly, and occasionally disappeared for stretches when one habit caught up with the other. Pax had used him perhaps half a dozen times over the past year, usually for the sort of information that mattered only when you knew what to look for.

Container numbers, dock schedules, changes in declared tonnage. Nothing remarkable on its own.

Which was why Daal calling something strange had caught his attention.

Pax had spent the better part of the afternoon tracing the man's movements backward through the district. His last confirmed shift ended shortly before midnight. A cantina account placed him at LAST RESOR forty minutes later, and the bartender remembered him primarily because Daal had left without paying for his second drink. Someone else remembered an argument outside. A third person remembered blood, although whether it belonged to Daal depended entirely on which version of the story Pax was currently hearing.

The reliable portion ended there. The rest pointed down an alley toward a doctor.

Calling the alley narrow would have been charitable. Two buildings leaned toward one another overhead as if conspiring to eliminate what little sky the lower levels had been allotted. Pipes sweated against stained ferrocrete. A noodle stall opposite the clinic flooded everything nearby in pink and cyan, lending the standing water along the curb a color it had almost certainly not possessed naturally.

Pax had already spoken to the woman working the stall. She remembered Daal. Not his name, but the coat. Gray. Long, cheap, one sleeve repaired near the cuff with thread several shades too light for the fabric. He had crossed the alley bleeding from somewhere beneath it. That had been enough.

Pax pushed open the clinic door.

The clinic made no effort to reassure anyone who stepped inside. The furniture looked collected rather than purchased, old fixtures had been left wherever removing them seemed more trouble than it was worth, and the dim lighting gave the room the worn-out look of a place that had changed hands more than once. Somewhere beyond the curtain, metal scraped softly against metal.

Pax let the door settle shut behind him. Appearances aside, the place had at least managed to remain in business.

A Gamorrean sat slumped forward in one of the mismatched chairs with a length of rebar protruding through his shoulder. Pax stopped just inside the doorway. The Gamorrean snored. Beyond the curtain, metal shifted and voices murmured low enough that he couldn't make out the words. Pax watched the sleeping patient for another moment, then stepped around him and moved farther into the clinic.

There was no receptionist, no intake terminal, and no obvious indication that anyone here kept records worth asking for. The remains of a security camera hung above the door, its lens dark beneath a layer of dust. A narrow counter occupied one side of the room, though whatever administrative purpose it served appeared to be largely theoretical.

Daal had come here. Pax was reasonably certain of that now. What happened afterward remained considerably less clear.

He wandered toward the far end of the waiting room without touching anything, taking stock of what had accumulated there. Empty packaging had been shoved beneath a cabinet. A cracked walking aid leaned against the wall. Someone had abandoned one boot. There were three magazines on a low table, all old enough that the political figures on their covers had probably died before Pax was born.

Then he saw the coat.

It had been pushed beneath the last chair in the row, partially hidden behind a waste bin. Gray fabric showed beneath the seat, wrinkled and darkened in places where something had dried into it. Pax crouched. The left cuff had been repaired with tan thread.

For the first time since entering the clinic, his attention stopped wandering.

He pulled the coat free carefully and laid it across the empty chair. There wasn't enough blood to suggest Daal had died in it. That meant very little, but it was something. One pocket contained nothing. The second produced a cheap metal lighter that worked on the fourth attempt. The inside breast pocket gave him a folded piece of flimsi. Pax opened it.

It was a laundry receipt.

He stared at it for several seconds. Two shirts. One pair of trousers. Cleaning and minor repair. Thirty-two credits. Paid in advance. There were few things less interesting than another man's laundry.

Pax read it again.

The collection stamp was from a shop six levels above them. Daal had dropped the clothing off four days ago, before sending Pax the message. The receipt gave him seven days to collect it before storage fees began accumulating. Nothing unusual. He turned the flimsi over. There was a locker number handwritten across the back.

C-418.

Pax's expression changed slightly. Most people would have written a locker number into their datapad. Daal barely trusted datapads with restaurant menus. The tallyman had once explained, at considerable length and with questionable technical accuracy, that anything stored on a network eventually belonged to whoever wanted it badly enough. Instead he wrote things down.

Pax folded the receipt along its original crease and slipped it into his own coat. The lighter followed. He left the rest where he'd found it. C-418 could belong to a transit station, a freight terminal, or any one of the storage facilities scattered through the district. It might even be meaningless, something Daal had written down weeks earlier and forgotten, but it was more than Pax had possessed ten minutes ago.

From behind the curtain came another metallic sound. Pax glanced toward it. He could leave now. The coat established that Daal had reached the clinic. The receipt provided something to investigate afterward. Whatever information the proprietor possessed would make the evening easier, but it was no longer necessary. That made the conversation considerably more appealing.

Pax crossed back toward the counter and placed three credit chips beside a cracked, dulled jar. A loaf and a piece of fruit had been left beside it. It was probably too much for a question and considerably too little for surgery. He considered the edibles on the counter again. Then, reaching into his pocket, deposited a small packet of circus peanuts.

"Doctor?"

He didn't raise his voice much. Pax settled against the edge of the counter, one hand resting loosely inside the pocket of his coat while the other turned the dead laundry receipt over beneath his thumb.

"Whenever you finish saving whoever's back there, I'd like to ask about the man who owned this coat."

// END RECORD

 

[Caspian Dinn]

Needz Credz?​

Gotz Organz 2 Spare?​

Smeg'z Ur Skraal!​

​

As he read what passed as an address tacked to the bottom of the tear-off flyer for the fourth time, Caspian frowned. He had found Last Resor, and the noodle stand, and was now stood in the too-tight alleyway staring at the graffiti on the wall.​

​

Even as an outsider to Galactic norms, Caspian found himself... dubious. The smiley face was a nice touch, not that the boy would ever admit it, and the buzzing, blinking dentistry light gave credence to it at least being some sort of medical facility, but even so it felt wrong.​

​

"Credits are credits, Casp" he reminded himself. Being so new to the world of tangible money, rather than having everything handed to him on a silver platter by oh so adoring worshippers, he had fast come to crave credit chits. Horde them, even. He already had a ship, and weapons, and finding food wasn't exactly difficult for him, making his outgoing expenses minimal.​

​

But damn if the allure of having more wasn't tempting all the same.​

​

With a rattling clunk, he hiked the backpack over his shoulder once more and stepped across the threshold into the grim clinic. It was nothing at all like the medical wing back home, not that Caspian had ever needed to spend much time in it. Doctors and healers came to him, not the other way around, and he had seen his fair share over his sickly little life. None had ever operated out of such filth, though, and the boy's nose wrinkled with disdain.​

​

He felt dirty just by exposure, ironic given how mucky he had gotten since his flight from Zaathru.​

​

For a moment his gaze trailed over the ailing Gamorrean, and something clawed at his belly internally. His nostrils flared, the scent of the creature's blood was tantalizing... but there was better out there, and the boy knew it. So too did the belly-beast. It wasn't spicy enough for his tastes.​

​

But the other figure in the waiting room? Oh, now it was practically dripping with spice. Caspian's eyes dilated, and he could feel his heart beating in his throat. The power he could extract from such a being was sickeningly tempting. the edge of his vision was blotting red, narrowing with unchecked hunger.​

​

Feast... Consume... Devour...​

​

The beast craved the corrupted energy the figure possessed; when Caspian looked their way he could not deduce species or gender or even height, there was only voracity.​

​

Smeg | Pax Velloran ​

 

[Ayrith Drayen]

///DIRECTIVE SET, SEEK DESERTER, LETHAL TERMINATION AUTHORIZED.
///DIG WITHIN THE RUINS, SIFT THROUGH THE ROT.
///REMEMBER YOUR BANNER, REMEMBER YOUR PURPOSE.

Subject 19-SC-V, verified strand-cast, AKA "Ayrith Drayen". Her name was only given to somehow drive a wedge between being little more than a droid constructed of flesh and bone, to humanize the thing grown in a tank, taught specific knowledge and trained to carry out one particular task: to bring about death, to be a surgically precise tool forged to cut out the undesirable and diseased.

Her handlers had sent her here, far down below, inside the lower intestines of a sprawling metropolis. Beneath the touch of sunlight, far away from the false faced city that would rather forget the darkness that squirmed and crept beneath. Ayrith had never stepped foot on Coruscant before, never was privy to the rich history that'd been buried and swept away time and time again.

The deep red of her visor glowed in the darkness, a stark contrast against the near pitch black of the area she'd found herself in; overhead were dying street lamps, flickering in and out, but refusing an absolute submission to the shadows that swallowed the corners and alleys nearby. Glimpses of storefronts, rust-eaten vehicles, broken machinery. There was a smell that clung to the air, a lingering stink of decay that forced itself inside her nostrils, even beneath her helmet.

There were memories here, things forgotten by those that could see the sky. Their eyes would never dare divert downward, and why should they? This was a place that haunted itself, alone yet occupied by the presence of those that clung to something they'd made their own.

Here is where Ayrith sought to find an escaped member of the staff that was responsible for her upbringing, one of few that guided her along in her limited understanding of the wider galaxy. An individual that was increasingly stressed and near breaking due to the demands placed upon them, opting for an out that meant total abandonment of their post and duties. This was unacceptable.

Their last known location had led Ayrith here, walking through filth covered streets, scanning every crevice and passerby, every doorway and window. Her attention was soon grabbed as she came across a crudely painted sign.

SMEG'Z KLINIK

Ayrith's head cocked to the side slightly, a slow blink behind her visor as she stepped closer slowly and looked at the entrance door, stopping as she held up her mechanical hand to push it inward. She could feel the vitals of others within, unsure if any of them belonged to her intended prey. There were to be no exceptions in her search, no stone unturned.

She entered, cold metallic digits falling to her side as she retrieved her lightsaber.

Smeg | Caspian Dinn | Pax Velloran
​

 

[Smeg]

"Seez," Smeg began, grabbing an admittedly sterile-looking scalpel from the tray with his tail and clambering over Boluk so he could see the procedure and not just his rodent bottom, "dis iz da skin." He handed himself the scalpel from tail to paw, before giving the upper ankle a prod with the blade. "You feelz dat?"

Boluk shook his head, watching the valuable anatomy lesson as Smeg took the gesture as carte blanche to begin the procedure. He did, dutifully, starting by cutting through skin and muscle to reach the bone. He'd seen it done before, and therefore, he knew how to do it, as any good doctor did. You couldn't just jump into the bonesaw. You had to make flaps. Flaps were important. A vital part of the process.

"And dis... iz unda da skin," the Skraal continued to explain with professional confidence.

The Abyssin didn't bleed like his usual patients. It didn't spray for a start, which Smeg very much appreciated with a distinctly pleased nod. Boluk instead oozed, his blood, near-black, thick and stingy in volume. Like a cut potato. No (some) mess, no fuss, no screaming. A gold star patient, really. He was pretty certain that there were some nice stickers in one of the drawers, and made a mental note to award one to the cyclops afterwards.

"You iz doin' berry well, Boluk," he reassured, as was also an important part of the job. As was saying the patient's name.

Through the curtain, the sound of the door opening promised more precious business, but as Smeg was a good doctor, he remained on the task at hand.

Flaps carved, the scalpel was traded for the bonesaw, his overly sterilised paw feeling like home in the handle. Using his tail, Smeg held back one of the skin flaps with his tail and tapped with the saw blade. "An' dis iz da bone. You seez it dere?" Boluk leaned forward a little to look, and nodded, nonplussed by the sight. "Dat iz da bone."

"Doctor?"

He didn't raise his voice much. Pax settled against the edge of the counter, one hand resting loosely inside the pocket of his coat while the other turned the dead laundry receipt over beneath his thumb.

"Whenever you finish saving whoever's back there, I'd like to ask about the man who owned this coat."

Smeg's head looked up for a moment, considering all the people he knew that owned coats. His mind drifted. Smeg owned a coat. But it couldn't have been him, because his coat was the most important coat of all, and it never left his furry little rodent body. He even slept in it. Then he promptly shook his head and replied through the curtain with his most professional shout:

"You givez Doctor Smeg five minutez! Den I be rite wif you!"

Did the door open again? Had the noodle stall had some unfortunate knife explosion that he was not privy to? What a treat!

"Sorry 'bout datz," he said, going back to Boluk. "I iz not forget 'bout you. I shud tellz you tho', dis part berry loudz. No needz to worry. Da loud meanz dat it is working."

The door.

One more?

Finally, his ship had come in! The galaxy was waking up to Doctor Smeg, Coruscant's finest medical practitioner, surgeon, and dentist (he had just decided). He had been seen, and seen as worthy.

The saw burst into life because, of course, it was powered. Manual saws were for woodworking and barbarians, not qualified doctors. The high-pitched whine pervaded the air of the entire surgery, and then immediately dropped in pitch as it made contact with bone. It was a sound that went through the teeth; high, hard and resonant.

 

[Pax Velloran]

Smeg'z Klinik | Coruscant, Lower Levels

Waiting Room | Smeg • Caspian Dinn • Ayrith Drayen

Five minutes.

Pax looked toward the curtain just as the powered saw came alive behind it. The pitch changed a moment later when it found something considerably less forgiving than air, filling the clinic with a mechanical whine that worked its way unpleasantly through his teeth.

"Take your time."

He wasn't entirely certain that was good advice.

The coat remained where he'd left it across the empty chair, its repaired cuff hanging toward the floor. Pax picked it up and folded it once before setting it beside him, more to keep someone from sitting on it than out of any particular respect for Daal's wardrobe. The laundry receipt had already given him somewhere else to look. Smeg could make that search easier, assuming the doctor remembered Daal and assuming whatever was happening behind the curtain left him in a conversational mood.

Neither assumption seemed especially unreasonable by the standards of the establishment.

The waiting room had acquired another occupant while Pax was occupied with the coat. A boy, young enough that his presence in a place offering surgery in exchange for groceries probably should have raised questions of its own. Instead, Pax noticed the way he was looking at him.

It wasn't casual curiosity.

Pax had spent enough time in bad districts around people considering bad decisions to recognize the familiar varieties of attention. Someone wondering whether he carried credits tended to watch the coat. Someone looking for a weapon watched the hands. Someone considering whether they could take him in a fight usually made a poor effort at not staring at his shoulders.

The boy simply looked hungry.

Pax met his gaze for a moment. Something about it produced the faint, unpleasant pressure of instinct warning him that there was more behind the expression than an underfed teenager in a clinic. He couldn't have said exactly what, which meant there wasn't much value in pretending he could.

"If you're waiting for the doctor," Pax said, still leaning against the counter, "I've been told five minutes."

The saw screamed behind the curtain again.

Pax glanced toward it.

"Approximately."

Before the boy could answer, the clinic door opened once more.

Pink and cyan light from the noodle stall spilled briefly across the floor before being cut off by a figure stepping through it. Pax's attention shifted toward the newcomer and stopped on the lightsaber in her hand.

That answered one question before he'd had the chance to ask it.

His own remained concealed beneath his coat, and Pax saw no reason to change that. An unfamiliar woman carrying a lightsaber into a lower-level clinic was certainly worth noticing, but Coruscant contained enough strange people with complicated reasons for being places that weren't his concern. If she wanted the doctor, she could wait. If she wanted someone else, that would become obvious soon enough.

For the moment, she hadn't activated the weapon.

That seemed like an encouraging standard to maintain.

Pax adjusted his position against the counter, enough to keep both newcomers within the same general field of view without making the movement look like preparation for anything. The Gamorrean continued snoring nearby with the stubborn commitment of someone determined not to participate in the evening at all.

For perhaps ten seconds, the clinic settled into an arrangement Pax wouldn't have believed if someone had described it to him earlier that afternoon. A sleeping Gamorrean remained impaled on a piece of building material. A teenager was staring at Pax like a meal he hadn't ordered yet. An armed woman had walked in carrying a lightsaber. Somewhere behind a curtain, an apparently self-certified rodent surgeon was removing part of another man's leg.

Pax looked down at the cheap lighter he'd taken from Daal's coat and turned it once between his fingers.

Found something strange.

In retrospect, Daal might have been underselling the district.

The lighter sparked on the second attempt this time. Pax closed it again and slipped it back into his pocket, then looked toward the curtain as the bonesaw continued its work.

He'd already followed one missing freight tallyman through half the lower levels. He had a coat, a laundry receipt, a locker number and the last place anyone had reliably seen Daal alive.

Whatever else happened in the next five minutes could wait its turn.

Pax glanced toward the curtain as the saw changed pitch again.


"Doc," he called over the noise, "no rush. Your waiting room appears to be developing its own problems."

His eyes moved from the hungry-looking teenager to the woman carrying a lightsaber.

"Several of them."

"Apparently you've become very popular."

 

[Caspian Dinn]

As words were cast his way, some semblance of sense returned to the boy who was forced to focus in order to make out what exactly the Force-strong individual had said. The beast tried to fight back, but Caspian squashed it down all the same and felt colour returning to his world. Not just that, but the man before him took a more tangible form.​

​

With a slow exhale, the lad nodded.​

​

"Okay" he rumbled, voice hoarse with hunger. Five minutes, then he could offload his goods and get out of here. It wouldn't do to lose control in so public a setting, he'd already almost blown his own cover once before and he was very lucky indeed that Hard Chrome had been on his side rather than the law's. He was itching to return to the droid with the credits split fifty-fifty as promised.​

​

Though when he looked to the stack of payments by the receptionist station he got a sinking feeling they wouldn't be as rich as he had been led to believe when all of this was over.​

​

Hopefully the doc' had credits to part with.​

​

When the woman entered Starlin took half a step away from her. Surprisingly, he moved closer to the man who had previously been more of a snack than a shield. A scowl formed as she brought her saber into her hand, a defensive growl escaping him before he could tame it.​

​

He knew lightsabers, he knew the damage they could do, and he had no plans of being nearby if she thought to ignite it.​

​

Smeg Pax Velloran Ayrith Drayen ​