Spek Zhio
Freelance Spacefarer
-- En reute to Yavin's Lode Star Utopia
"So, there's this uncharted planet called Iliabath, that sits outside the rim of the Stygian Caldera," blinking lights across the flight console had him stop mid-sentence. "How do I know of its existence if it's uncharted? What kind of dumb question was that? Uncharted does not mean unknown! There are records of it on the HoloNet, people just forgot how to safely get there!"
The console flashed red and beeped a few times.
"No, of course I also don't know! But I can find a way to get there," the male Zeltron said with a grin, while rubbing his thumb against his index and middle fingers, with deliberate intent, "and that's why we're being paid!... or will be... Well, once we get there we will be!"
The flight panel went off into another multi-colored display of discontentment.
"That's not even the worst part," Spek said while getting up from the pilot's seat. His seat, and the only one on the entire ship being used. "Did you not hear me mentioning the Stygian Caldera? Yes," he said, while reaching inside a cargo container for a bag of snacks, "you get it now don't you? After rummaging through your astrogation buffer - which really needs to be updated, by the way - that the Caldera is the nebula that encloses the Sith Worlds." He opened the bag and began to take out and eat the chips inside.
This time, the entire cockpit cabin took part in the response. Lights dramatically blinking on and off all across the walls and ceiling, and all sorts of beeps and boops ringing everywhere, for a couple of seconds.
"Sorry, do you want some nerf-flavored chips as well?" He held one in front of him, in jest, as if offering it to the ship's computer.
Spek Zhio's starship, a retrofitted yet (somewhat) fully operational relic of a CEC YT-1930 Transport, lacked a proper navicomp - among other, less critical, technological components - since back when he had found it on an abandoned Corellian shipyard. Technically, calling it a junkyard would be more fitting, but Spek would never admit to it out loud in the presence of LC-1.
LC-1 - or Alcyone, as friends called her (i.e., Spek) - was once a near-decommissioned RX-Series second-degree pilot droid, found near the ship, from which Zhio took out the heuristic processor and repurposed it as ship's computer. Alas, since he had never managed to get the droid's vocabulator to work with the ship, Alcyone was relegated to communicate via other less - sometimes, arguably more - direct means.
To an outsider, the ship would most likely appear to be on the fritz. But Spek knew that it was the only way in which LC-1 could communicate with him. And what an incessant communicative co-pilot she could be!
He liked to believe that he was, in fact, able to understand her. Though whether that was true or not, not even he could tell. Still, it was better than talking to himself during his many long space hauls, all on his lonesome, confined inside a titanium-chromium hull.
"It's fine if you do, you can even have the whole bag if you want! After all, we still have tons of the stuff left to eat!" He glanced over his shoulder to the corridor behind, filled floor-to-ceiling with shipping crates, overflowed from the cargo areas. "It's all... we have... to eat..."
Alcyone told him just how much she appreciated the joke, by momentarily dimming the cockpit's ambient light. Spek imagined it as if she was glaring at him. He threw himself back onto his pilot's seat, rubbed his hand against the cockpit as if petting it, and carried on with his side of the dialogue...
"There, there... let me recap and explain everything to you.
"We've just intercepted this low-frequency broad transmission back in Krylon, right? It was encrypted but we still had those keys that Riamah gave us, way back - it's an older code, but it checks out...
"It started with the usual, if you're able to listen to this transmission, then you are just the kind of smuggler I need," he pantomimed while speaking in a lower register. "Yeah I know, such a derogatory term, right? Smugglers? We're just independent contractors! Freelance space haulers!... But aaaaaaaanyway... I responded, and we got the job, and that's why we hopped onto the Yavin Bypass. One short jump away from our destination. Yeah, Yavin, where else?
"The job?" he looked down and brushed off some crumbs from his bare naked chest. "Nothing much. Just the usual, charter me to this uncharted, untraveled to, and most certainly definitely very much dangerous planet, and I'll pay the agreed upon price."
He ate another handful of chips, chewing loudly, to help ignore the cacophonous complaints of the ship.
"It's really simple, Alcy. Don't worry, I've looked it up.
"The most direct route would be to take the Daragon Trail from Yavin to Korriban, smack dab inside Sith territory. From there, we switch lanes to the Nache Bhelfia all the way to Athiss, then fly along the Descri Wris until finally hitting Nfolgai on the nebula's edge. After that, it's a simple matter of using my instinctive astrogation expertise, to plot a jump to Iliabath. That would take us on a pilgrimage through Sith space to come out the other side."
He gave the ship a complicit, nerf-chip colored, grin. The flight console let out a harmonious bleeping sound in response.
"Ah ah! You know me all to well, my old friend! Of course we're not going to do any of that. We'll stay well clear of Sith space, don't you worry your little heuristic circuitry! And that, is why we get paid the big buck... ets of nerf-flavored chips..."
The instruments blinked and bleeped again, this time to actually inform that they were about to exit hyperspace into the Yavin system. With all astrogation computations being correct, less than one minute away from their destination, the Lode Star Utopia mining space station.
Zhio got up and walked towards the cabin's exit.
"So, I'm off to see a man about a job, at the nearest cantina. A so-called Drane fellow who's waiting for me at the Golden Nugget. And, hopefully, get him to buy me a drink to push down these tasteless chips."
At a loud beep from his ship, he stopped and glanced back.
"What's in Iliabath? I dunno," he shrugged, "but I assume probably some Jedi or Sith relic. Who cares which one it is and why? It's all the same in the end! Balance to the Force and all that jazz... Thing is, you can't really have balance if it's always the same side winning, am I right?"
Yet another beep as he was almost out the cabin.
"Don't worry, I won't forget to take my jacket, mining space stations are as cold as a wampa's ass" beep, "nor the bracelet," beep, "blasters, right, blasters," beep, "the lightsabers! I was going to! I swear!" BEEP, "Alright already! I'll take the whole damn belt!" BEEEEEEEEEP! "Oh," he said, looking down at his fully naked body. "Pants. I won't forget pants, this time..."
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