The twin suns had risen, sending a shaft of light into the doorway of the apartment. Malica's visor flashed a glare across the ravaged living room. Awaking from a unsatisfying sleep, she took off her helmet and lit another cigarra. It soon joined its dead brothers in a pile of ash near the leg of the armchair.
The morning light revealed the real damage in the abandoned apartment, reduced by the night a few hours before. Trash, broken furniture, and the remnants of bonfires littered what used to be a decent inhabitance, at least for an apartment in Mos Eisley close to Tarr Mas.
The apartment had grown progressively worse since she last visited it a few months before her move to Anchorhead. Malica had the chance to lock the door on her way out, but chose against it. She needed to see the house further defiled before she could begin to repair and rebuild. Still too many ghosts in the walls. Maybe they had departed. A shade of Cyrus, her Mandalorian mentor, stood in the threshold in front of her, handsome and lion-esque in the dry Tatooine sun. "K'atini, cyar'ika!" she shouted at him, longing for something stronger than tabacc. She shooed him off with an angry wave of her hand and the ghost limped into the street without his helmet.
Had the trip from Anchorhead not fully sobered her? More ghosts from years ago, friends joined by a steady supply of spice, flocked through the three other rooms of the house, replaying faint memories stimeltaneously: Jarra's overdose; Aziz in Cyrus' bed; the night a little girl came looking for her mother.
Malica twisted around in the armchair to watch a ghost of herself in the kitchen; a gaunt twenty three year old creature in a dancer's outfit dry heaving over the sink, contaminated powder inhaled through the nose, fire wracking through her face and throat, a drip that upturned her stomach for hours.
"Get away," Malica grumbled, eyes bloodshot and tearing, red snot running down her chin, "Why do you still come here? Were you waiting for me to...'tstop playing? Could see me like this? Well here am I, sick of FAKING for you. Next time, you might as well bring me another hit."
Cyrus stood behind her, face shadowed. He reached out to touch her back and she wrung away, causing another spasm of dry heaving. The second time he reached for her, she was too weak to fight him. It was Cyrus, not her friends, who carried her into bed that night, fed her a Kolto solution, and made sure she slept without falling unconscious forever.
She cried into the crook of his neck and shoulder, having awoke in pain, still high, and not remembering where she was. "Why don't you want me?" Malica asked him over and over, mistaking him for a different figure from her childhood. "I'm sorry I'm not strong enough to protect you." Cyrus knew Malica wouldn't remember this moment or several after. She spilled out years of bottled-up miserable truth and he kept her secrets.
When she said she swore she would defeat him one day, he believed her. It was a subliminal warning his instincts were aware of. He already bore wounds from her that stung with the faults of others. His eyes grazed the bedroom, the edge of the nightstand, the floor, for signs of who'd been in the house with her when she'd taken the spice.
The following night a group of young men and women were found dead in a trap house in Tar Mass from a batch of spice laced with carsunum. If the authorities had cared to do autopsies on the bodies of a half dozen junkies, they would have discovered those with no spice in their blood had died of asphyxiation.
The Cyrus ghost played over and over again, like a broken hologram, staring at her, turning, and leaving. She flicked a cigarra butt at it, to no avail to its disappearance. The ghosts weren't leaving the house so she did. A few blocks down the crowded sandy street, past a droid shop, a hand grabbed her right forearm. She spun around and matched her pistol with the temple of whomever touched her, pushing her assailant-now-victim into an alley before any citizens heading to the market had noticed she had drawn her weapon.
"Who sent you?" she asked the thug, obviously a rookie, from the look of fear on his face and the way he spat out "Yalus Cor" so quickly. This man must have had some favor owed to her former boss or he was just considered dispensable. She assumed the later. "Tell Yalus if he sends another one of you stinking thugs after me, I'll send the goon back castrated and come later for him," Malica growled and removed her gun.
"Message received," snickered Yalus as he appeared at the other end of the alley, flanked by two large mercenaries. Their weapons were lamely hidden by thin merchant robes and the shapes on their hips suggested that they arrived well-armed. "What's my favorite dancer doing dressed up like a Mandalorian and threatening the manhood of harmless citizens?" asked the lanky Zabrack. "Perhaps she thinks she's become a hunter."
"Still nursing a broken heart after two years? I see you missed me, Yalus," Malica chided, not at all happy to encounter Yalus on her first day back in the city.
"My eyes see beyond Mos Eisley. I knew you were here on Tatooine as soon as you arrived in Mos Epsa. You could only resist being away for me for so long."
"Who can resist a lying, scheming bastard who cheats at Pazaak? Certainly not me."
"My poor heart." Yalus clucked, and continued,"I'm here to teach you a lesson about running away from a powerful man who adores you and the credits you attract at his establishment. Do report back to the Four Roses after your vacation. Or should I say vaccination? When you find your way out of the canyon, I'll be waiting for you." Two more mercenaries appeared at the entrance of the alleyway. "Gentlemen," Yalus said, signaling them to capture her.
Carrying only her blaster pistol, Malica eyed a dumpster. A mercenary predicted her next move and lunged at her as she climbed atop it. A well aimed heel kick downward smashed him in the face, with a satisfying crunch. She ascended the roof of the building to the right of the alley, the grip of her boots offering some leverage on the round packed huts that made up the city. The congestion of the apartments below now played to her advantage. She scaled at least five before hopping off into the backyard of a house, jumping a low fence made of rusty scrap metal and melding into the crowd of a street perpendicular to the one she had been traveling.
It seemed like Yalus had agents everywhere, however, and was able to estimate her path. Malica didn't get far before a slimmer mercenary, perhaps a shifter, came out of the dark doorway of an apartment, assaulted Malica from behind and plunged a syringe of sedative into her neck. She fell unconscious indignantly, beaten at her own game.
***
The twin suns had set. Malica awoke drowsily, finding her neck adorn with a shock collar. She carefully moved, and not receiving a shock, decided to keep walking. Malica observed the area and recognized the rocky landscape of Sluuce Canyon. While not remote, the canyon was deep, especially for a traveler on foot. She was equally likely to intercept a speeder heading to Mos Eisley as she was a caravan of Tusken Raiders.
Her foot got caught under a rock and she fell, discovering not only that her collar would shock her when damaged, but that her most valued possession, Cyrus' blue Mandalorian helmet, was gone. A trickle of blood dripped down the back of her head and it seemed that the jagged landscape, like Yalus, had admitted a vendetta against her.
[member="Talos"], [member="Hugh Seyley"]
