Slash and Burn

[Gorba the Hutt]

Jostling through the crowded public transport shuttle, Luchius LeFrange managed to find his seat. Right next to a snoring Besalisk. Great. Why did it always have to be Besalisks?

“Hey, excuse me? Hey you. Wake up. That’s my seat.” The Besalisk blinked blearily up at Luchy and Luchy gave him a filed-point smile he didn’t really feel, then the Besalisk shifted its bulk so LeFrange could scoot past. Luchy tossed his bag under the seat in front of him, which gave him exactly enough leg room to make him think he might be comfortable. He was not. The Besalisk’s obesity overflowed the bounds of its seat, with folds of fat spilling over the armrest and into LeFrange’s personal space.

The Devaronian sighed. The joys of public transit. Some day Narbo would give him his own private shuttle to use, but apparently the did not yet have the “funds” for that sort of thing. Narbo said he was trying a new thing called fiscal responsibility. LeFrange thought it was ridiculous. This would be so much more efficient if he only had a personal ship. Curling against the bulkhead of the cabin, Luchy closed his eyes and settled in for the long flight from Ryloth to Rishi.

Before he knew it, he was waking up to another safe landing on the tropical wonderland planet. He disembarked, bag slung over one shoulder, and stretched his legs. Yawning for a long moment, he glanced around. He supposed the spaceport looked like any other spaceport. Maybe a little more backwater than most, since the Rishi had only recently discovered technology.

“Where is that Arcona?”

“Lookin’ for me?”

Luchy froze and turned slowly toward a shadowy area of the port. Two eyes that glittered like absurdly large diamonds stared back. The voice chuckled.

“That you Skrambles?”

“You bet your magnificent horns it is.”

The two clasped hands. “Ever the master of flattery, Jiimi. Been a while.”

“Yeah. Follow me, I got our ride lined up. You got any luggage?”

“No, this is it.”

“Good deal.” Jiimi led LeFrange toward the nearby street. “So you still killin’ for creds?”

“Depends… how much are you paying?”

The two chuckled wickedly. “Alright, that’s the one. Cheap, but I guess that’s the name of the game for now.”

They both clambered inside the hovercraft, Jiimi in the driver’s seat. He cranked the ignition and the craft rumbled to life. Jiimi pulled out and up, cruising just above the buildings.

“How long is the flight?” LeFrange asked.

Jiimi turned toward him with those enormous eyes and smiled. “Nine hours.”

“Sweet mercy.”

“Buckle up, honey.”

“I just got off a public transit. Was hoping to be able to stretch my legs for a bit.”

“Yeah? Well if you want to hike for three weeks into the swamps be my guest.”

“You joke. How did you find this place?”

“I have my ways.” Jiimi tapped the side of his noggin’.

The craft dipped lower as they zipped out of the city, skimming along the leafy canopy. A mountain range towered to the east, impressively tall, with peaks lost in the clouds.

“Alright. What’s the skinny?”

Jiimi nodded, the way he usually did before he started to spew details like a machine. LeFrange grimaced.

“Only the important stuff, Skrambles.”

“Ok, ok. Hmm, well you probably know that the Rishii themselves only live up in those mountains. They don’t really come down to the lowlands that often. The lowlanders are a mix of species, but where I’m taking you there’s only one village within kilometers and it’s just a bunch of Galandans working exonium mines.”

“Exonium?”

“Mhm, local fuel source. Looked into it a bit, not that many uses. Except apparently you can use the stuff to power sonic weapon. Think that might interest the boss?”

“Eh, maybe. Let’s focus on what we came here for first.”

“Right, the plantations. So the soil is very nutritious. Not exactly what I thought when Narbo said he was sending me to a ‘tropical world,’ but whateva. It’s rich and fertile. Couldn’t ask for a better location.” Jiimi pulled out what looked like a nutrition bar from his pocket and peeled it open with his mouth. The ‘bar’ was actually a white, rectangular chunk of opaque crystal. Jiimi stuck one end in his mouth and started sucking on it.

“Is… is that salt?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah.”

“I thought you broke that habit.”

Jiimi snorted. “We all got our poisons, LeFrange. You still do deathsticks?”
“Yeah.”

“You might not want to do that in front of the locals.”

“Seriously?”

“They uh, they have some funny practices.”

“Fantastic. Alright, what about local groups. Anyone we have to worry about?”

“Mmm, no. Maybe. I’m not sure yet. There’s this group calling themselves the Coratanni, or somethin’, but they set up shop in the cities with a nightclub. Way on the other side of the planet from us.”

“And where will we be exactly?”

“South pole.”

“Wonderful.”

Nine hours later Jiimi pulled the hover car to a stop in the middle of a large patch of solid ground utterly surrounded by swampland. LeFrange hopped out of the speeder and went three steps before he was up to his ankles in boggy water that smelled like rot.

“What the hell is this, Jiimi?”

“This is the place.”

“This is a fething swamp. I told Narbo we had something solid here, but you know what isn’t solid? The ground, Jiimi.” He stamped on the ground to emphasize his point. The ground moved like a trampoline. “You flew me out here in the middle of the nowhere to show me this. It fething stinks.”

Jiimi continued to suck on his salt bar, infuriatingly calm. “Keep your horns up, bucko. I’ve got this figured out. I know a guy.”

“You know a guy…”

“Yeah, says he can drain the swamp. Narbo already okayed him for the op.”

LeFrange grunted. “Ok, but if this goes sideways don’t blame me when Narbo bumps you off.”

Jiimi stopped sucking. “Wha-. That… that won’t be necessary.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

The local village was two hours away by hovercraft. All in all, LeFrange was doing a lot more sitting than he had anticipated. Not exactly a dream vacation. He leaned against the wall of the general store while Jiimi purchased the necessary supplies. Mostly camping equipment and dehydrated foodstuffs.

“He’s meeting us here?”

“Mhm.” Jiimi waved him off. “He’ll be here.”

A few minutes later, the door creaked open. LeFrange turned to see a karking enormous creature blocking the door. The figure shuffled in, back hunched in a horrific slouch, using a cane to walk. The cane rapped against the ground with regularity. Thunk. Shuffle. Thunk. Shuffle. The Chevin approached LeFrange. Its pachyderm face was incredibly long, nearly touching the floor. Its arms hung low, nearly as low as its feet. Beady eyes stared out from a body that was seventy percent head.

“Mr. LeFrange, I presume,” wheezed a distinctly masculine voice.

“Mr. Xenar, how are you this fine day?”

“Oh, these old bones are managing.” LeFrange couldn’t tell if he was smiling.

“So I hear you can help with our little swamp issue?”

“Indubitably.”

“Great, you work on this sort of thing a lot?”

“Oh, I have some experience with plantations.”

Something in the way the Chevin’s dark eyes twinkled with those words made Luchius supremely uncomfortable.

“Uhm, ok. Great. Tell Jiimi what we need I guess.”

“Excellent, I have a list.” Tubul Xenar shuffled toward the Arcona.

The hover car quickly became bogged down with shovels, tents, and a number of other supplies. The store manager raised an eyebrow.

“You folks are certainly clearin’ me out. Looking to open a mining expedition?”

“Yep,” was all Jiimi said, spoken from around a bar of salt.

In no time, they had all the necessary supplies. The rest of the day they spent back at the site, erecting tents and preparing for the arrival of more hands. Jiimi informed LeFrange that Xenar had started the hiring process, so the Devaronian was not all that surprised when a bunch of people showed up the next day. All of them looked similar to Weequays, but were in fact down-on-their-luck Galandans.

“So their mine shut down?”

“Yeah, and none of the other unions would take ‘em. Would probably wind up trying to make it back to the city or something, but they would hate that.”

“Why’s that?”

“They like it out here.”

“You joke.”

“Nope, cross my heart.”

“Ok, what are we paying them?”

Jiimi showed him a datapad with the numbers and Luchy’s eyebrows shot up. Apparently, Galandans worked for a daily salary that wouldn’t feed a single factory worker on Coruscant.

“Well that’s cheap,” muttered LeFrange.

“Mhm. ”

The next several days wore on and LeFrange came and went between the work site and the local village. Xenar started the process of dredging out the surrounding swampland using a large machine originally intended for mining, which so far was the most expensive purchase. Apparently the work was going well, but Luchy couldn’t tell the difference. The ground looked just as swampy and miserable. He spent most of his time in the town, perusing the various vices it offered. Eventually, he noticed the Galandan workers started to hush whenever he walked past them until finally he confronted them.

“Ok what’s the deal. You keepin’ secrets? You working for another outfit?”

“Uh, no Mr. LeFrange. We are merely concerned for your immortal spirit.”

“My what?”
“I am sorry, Mr. LeFrange, but we could not help but notice that you often return to camp smelling of cheap perfume and liquor.”

“So?”

“Have you heard of the blessed way of H’kig?”

Jiimi pushed his way through the assembled dozen or so Galandans. “Excuse me. Excuse me, thank you.”

“Mr. LeFrange, you must turn from your immoral ways and embrace the imminent, the transcendent, and the eternal. Only these will balm your spirit, you must-”

“What in the fething void are you talking about.”

A Galandan woman gasped in the background.

“Oooookay!” Jiimi butted in, “Luchy, let’s walk.”

He placed a hand on LeFrange’s arm and attempted to steer him away from the concerned ex-miners.

“What the hell was that, Skrambles?”

“So, uh, remember when I said the locals had funny practices? There are a couple billion people on the planet, most of ‘em Galandans, like our employees. They follow this religion called H’kig. It’s harmless, I swear. It encourages simple living and morality. It’s why they are so cheap.”

LeFrange needed a second to mull it over. “Fine, just tell them not to… not to…” He really didn’t have words. Nobody had ever had the guts to tell him to amend his ‘immoral ways’ since he’d last seen his mother over a decade ago. He fished in his pocket and withdrew a box of deathsticks. He started to pull one out.

“Uh, can you not do that around them? They’re the best workers we can hope for here. I’ll tell them to lay off you, but if you antagonize them they might leave.”

“Antagonize them? I’m the one who is fething paying for them.”

“Technically Narbo is, but they value morality more than money, so let’s not test that.”

“Worst job ever. “

“Oh cheer up. We aren’t even through the first week yet, LeFrange.”

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Second Week

Jiimi Skrambles’ small frame stormed through camp. Apparently, one of the workers had gone missing yesterday and apparently no one had thought this might be important to tell him until the afternoon. He sucked furiously on a salt crystal. Didn’t these idiots know that the first twenty-four hours were the most crucial? Not that he thought of the disappearing Galandan as a missing person. What he told LeFrange was true, for the most part. The H’kig followers were pretty passive, but not all of these Galandans followed H’kig. The one who up and vanished? Creds to sodium he was a Coratanni plant.

Another thing Jiimi had undersold LeFrange on, not that the Coratanni were a threat exactly. They just might be keeping tabs on newcomers. Jiimi couldn’t be too sure and so he decided to be suspicious of everyone. Especially these workers. Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to ruin months of work and tell LeFrange they had to set up somewhere else, then get sent to another backwater planet. No, he would make this work and get the stars off this greenhouse before the humidity killed him.

The north east section of the operation was not populated, even by the camp’s sparse standards. He saw maybe three Galandans along the way and asked each of them if they had seen the one called Neka. Each gave him the same answer. Last time he had been seen was out at the fringe of the camp’s north east section, working on a drain pipe.

The drain pipe, as it turned out, was half-finished. Jiimi had to slosh through water nearly up to his knees to get out to the pipe itself. He didn’t want to think what might be swimming around his feet, or what sort of decaying refuse the green algae on the top of the water feasted on. He just did what Jiimi Skrambles did best: investigate. It took him all of five minutes to find a shoe floating behind a mangrove tree.

“The kriff?”

He picked up the shoe and examined it. Simple and plain. Definitely Galandan. Dark stains covered the shoe.
“Hmm. Mhm. Mhm. Hmm.”

Shoe in hand, Jiimi sloshed back to the main camp area for further examination.

About an hour later he stood in front of LeFrange and Xenar. “Yeah, shoe was covered in blood. Thought he might have been a spy or somethin’, but I think a wild animal ate Neka. Rough way to go.”

Neither LeFrange nor Xenar looked like they particularly cared about the fate of the Galandan.

“This gonna set us back?” asked the Devaronian, words dripping from his mouth in a honeyed drawl.

“No,” shuffled Tubul, “We have enough workers to finish the job.”

“Alright then, nice work Jiimi. Keep an eye out for that animal, just in case it decides it likes the taste of our workers.”

“You got it.”

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

The ground shook like an earthquake, except earthquakes usually didn’t moo and smell like dung. Jiimi threw off the covers and ran out the front of his tent just in time to see a herd of k’hir careen through the camp.

“We are hallucinating.”

Panic filled the Arcona as he spotted a group of the shaggy animals break off and lower their heads in his general direction. If it was a hallucination, it certainly didn’t feel like one. He ran. One of the shaggy animals nearly bulldozed him, but instead took out his tent. Jiimi jumped behind a nearby tree, grabbed ahold of the bark and started to climb up. He hugged the trunk while the beasts trampled everything below. The Arcona clung to the tree and shoved his face into the bark, desperately hoping for it to all end.

The noises began to fade. Ever so slowly, he peered out from around the tree trunk to stare at a camp in complete disarray. Tents were trampled. Pieces of equipment lay in shambles. Jiimi shimmied down the tree and wandered through the wreckage. Others milled about, dazed looks on their faces. He saw three Galandans, fear etched into their faces.

“Are any of you hurt?” Asked Jiimi.

“The evil one, he is here.” The Galandan stared at Jiimi, eyes glazed.

“What?”

“The k’hir flee from the presence of darkness dwelling within this lowland. Evil ate Neka. Evil will come for us all.”

“What are you talking about?”


Another Galanda spoke, voice barely above a whisper. “The Maungur. The Maungur.”

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Later that day...

“Injuries only amount to a few broken bones, but the real cost is the foodstuffs. Tents we can replace, but now we’ll need to go into town and buy more supplies.” Xenar rumbled.

LeFrange did not look happy. “Alright, fine. We’ll go into town tomorrow. Let’s fix what we can for now. What’s this maungur the workers are blabbing about?”

“They think it’s the incarnation of evil,” replied Jiimi. “Did a little research. Some sort of predator that hunts in the lowland. Maybe it spooked the K’hir? Either way, the maungur are a protected species by the Rishi.”

“Well if it starts to cause problems it will be a protected corpse.” LeFrange started to storm out.

“Where are you going?” Jiimi asked.

“To make some k’hir burgers.”

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

In the middle of the night Jiimi awakes to the sound of screaming. He rushes out of his tent and passes a mutilated body. He hears the sound of blasterfire, then bumps into LeFrange. The Devaronian is clutching his arm and bleeding badly. LeFrange informs Jiimi that the Maungur is huge, killed the three locals he had hired as security, and they are going to need to hunt this Maungur down if they are going to continue operations.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Jiimi leaves LeFrange and Xenar on Rishi and takes a bus back to Ryloth to recruit a few hired guns. A Rodian by the name of Pauul Farrlo meets up with Jiimi and they have a short discussion where Pauul says he already took a contract, but he knows a three brothers from the Tanwa clan who have experience hunting Ghest and are currently on Ryloth trying to duck the Hutts. Farrlo says to go to X apartment complex and ask for One-Eye. One-Eye turns out to be a brutal looking Rodian who lost his eye hunting Ghest. He and his two brothers have experience hunting down big beasts and are happy to take the job, for a price. Jiimi wonders if he made a mistake as he watches the grab a crate of mines and three large gun cases. They can’t take the bus with those sort of weapons, so Jiimi arranges a flight with an Ubese who never gives his name. The Ubese drops them off without incident at a village on Rishi and they take a hovercraft out into the swamps.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

One-Eye loves hunting, grew up hunting. He started hunting small animals as a child and steadily worked his way up the food chain. Hunted pretty much everything there was to hunt on Rodia. Took a trip around the galaxy with his brothers hunting. But he had never hunted a Maungur before. He thinks about all of this as he sets up in a sniper perch in a dead tree. His brothers laid out a series of electrical pylons to funnel the beast in. They found its home, an abandoned mine several kilometers away, but hunting it inside the mine seemed like a bad idea. They tried laying mines at the mouth of the cave, but that only wounded it. One-Eye had expected this. The creature was huge. 3 meters tall with a thick hide and razor claws. A tank. So he needed a tank killer. They tracked the beast’s spore out into the swamp and managed to fence it in with the pylons. Now they just had to wait. He peers through the thermal scope and sees his brothers running frantically. “Here they come.” They sprint past his hideout and behind them lumbers an enraged behemoth, vibrospears sticking out from its body at odd angles. One-Eye centers the targeting reticle and squeezes the trigger. A single disruptor round capable of penetrating tank armor smacks the Maungur in the chest, kills it instantly, and it hits the ground like an earthquake.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

LeFrange is very impressed by the Rodians and gives them a bonus. He starts talking about a more permanent arrangement with Narbo’s “outfit.” One-Eye asks if they were part of the group that wiped out the Deathwind Outfit back on Roon and took over the spice mine. LeFrange smiles. One-Eye says they’re calling them the Zareca Cartel. Before the arrangement can go any further, a bunch of Rishii fly down from the sky, through the swamp canopy and surround the group. One-Eye has the corpse of the Maungur on the bed of a repulsorsled. The Rishii say they are the protectors of the sacred Maungur and are horrified that any would violate the ban on the killing of the Maungur. LeFrange explains that he didn’t know there was a ban and asks why they protect it. They say it’s the personification of evil and must be held sacred, then they say that the offworlders must leave or they will be removed when the Rishii report back to their sky temple. LeFrange gets irritated and shoots the talking Rishii in the face. The Rishii try to fight back, but they are using spears and slings. One-Eye and his brothers join in and Jiimi takes out a holdout pistol and they massacre the Rishii. One-Eye’s youngest brother takes a spear to the gut and needs to get patched up, but otherwise it was a slaughter. LeFrange spits on the corpse and says “I’m the personification of evil” and then tells Xenar to chop up the bodies and dump them in the swamp. Three H’kig workers witness the whole thing.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

H’kig followers go on strike demanding the criminals repent. LeFrange throws a fit and rants about “You know what we are building here? Plantations for spice,” and basically explains what they’ve been working on this whole time. The Galandans are horrified and refuse to cooperate. LeFrange tells Xenar to handle it. Xenar takes a day to think it over, then announces that he has decided to join the H’kig way. As a celebration they will hold a simple meal together. The meal is soup. Unbenownst to the Galandans, it’s a soup seasoned with savorium herb. They all become incredibly complacent and walk around with stupid smiles. LeFrange is happy because he doesn’t have to kill anyone else.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Several weeks later, a group of Rishii arrive from a sky temple and see that the swamp has been drained and Galandans are planting what appear to be “crops” they don’t particularly care what the lowlanders do and are only seeking to know what happened to the Rishii protecting the Maungur. Xenar is the only overseer left at this point and tells them he has no idea. They question the Galandans, but they just smile and say they are happy and everything is fine. Over and over again. The Rishii are confused, but assume that lowlanders are strange anyway, and they leave.