Private Those Without Shackles

[Darth Strosius]

Patrolling around space was always an oddly calming affair. The endless abyss could give way to an enemy ship or fleet at any moment, especially this far away from any borders. Yet still Alisteri could feel his paranoia dissolve every time he stared out into the space beyond his ship's windows.

And then his moment of calm reflection was broken.

:"High Priest, your presence is requested on the bridge.": The intercom in his room crackled to life and caused the Sith to sigh. "Duty calls." He turned away from his window and took a moment to don his mask and smooth out his robes. One had to be presentable when marching down the hallways of a ship after all, it certainly inspired the crew more if nothing else. Without any further time wasted he stepped out of his room and began the walk to the bridge.

He arrived within a minute or so and gave the captain a nod as he stood next to him. "Status report." The captain nodded to the window at the front of the bridge, a ship visible far ahead of their own. "It has power but it hasn't moved or given off any signs of activity since we spotted it. Orders?" The Sith's eyes narrowed at the vessel, as if his stare would gleam some information that the ship itself was hiding. "Send them a transmission. Let's see if they have anyone alive onboard."

The communications officer was quick to tap on their console and attempt to open up a link with the ship in front of them. "Ready to send High Priest." Alisteri nodded and rolled his shoulders as he fixed the ship with a much more relaxed, if measured, stare.

:"This is the Altorius to unknown vessel. What is your status?":

Celina

 

[Celina]

Celina was free.

This thought raced through he mind on a near constant repetition. She had been a slave all her life; the property of another living being and used for tasks she wished she could forget. She had been without a name, referred to as simply ‘that one’ or ‘slave girl’ or a myriad of other titles. She had been nothing, she had been no one. Destined to die on a moon without a name for a master no one knew, and fade from the galaxy as if she had never been born.

But now she was free. The Sith that had come and killed her master, her fellow slaves, and her only friend, had shattered the shackles that held her, both physically and mentally. In her rage she had turned on that Sith and avenged the death of her friend, and in doing so, had lain claim to the ship that had brought him to that nameless moon. She was free, and so she took that ship and coaxed it to life with the help of internal systems. She had punched in random coordinates, unsure as to how starships of any kind worked, and put her trust in fate. It had worked out for her thus far that day.

She was free, but now she was marooned. The ship had barely lasted three days before it ran out of fuel. She could do nothing to keep it moving, and her frustrated attempts to do something, anything had only damaged the vessel. It had been a week since the ship had begun to drift, the few rations and resources left on the ship running out. She had taken to sitting in the cockpit of the vessel, wrapped in a blanket to combat the heat since the ships heating systems had died two days ago. She stared out into the dark void of space, musing on her recently found freedom and the cost it seemed intent on making her pay.

A flashing icon on the console beside her drew her from her thoughts. Glancing down, she hesitated for a moment before pressing the control, and jumped as a voice came through, echoing around the cockpit. She paused for a moment, considering her words before finally speaking.

“This is…Celina,” she said “this ship I am on has lost fuel and is losing power.” Her words were crisp and formal, lacking many of the nuisances common in regular speech. Conversations were still new to Celina, and over her lifetime had only ever truly spoken with one person. This sudden arrival was both a relief for its potential rescue, but also terrifying. She did not know what to expect.

Darth Strosius

 

[Darth Strosius]

The moments before they got a response were tense. With random floating ships out in the middle of space one never knew what could happen. It could be some sort of pirate trap, some marooned pleasure ship, or just someone running low on fuel. The response that came through was admittedly not unexpected but it did little to ease nerves.

All it proved was that someone was alive on that ship.

:"Message received...Celina. Prepare for docking.": Alisteri nodded as the message was sent and he turned to the captain. "Bring us in, we'll pull it into the hangar and I'll see who's inside. Be ready on the guns just in case someone shows up." The captain raised an eyebrow. "So the standard protocol then?" The Sith only nodded in reply as he marched off of the bridge as the Altorius flew forward to intercept the smaller ship.

He gestured to the two Legionnaires standing guard outside of the bridge's entrance as he passed them. "You two, with me." Alisteri strode down to the hangar with his guards in tow as the Altorious came up alongside the ship, carefully dragging it into the hangar bay with another small tug ship that they deployed. It wasn't their first time pulling in a stray after all.

The Sith Knight stepped into the hangar as the rescued ship landed inside, making his way over to it as he inspected it. An interesting ship for sure, not something that a typical pirate or smuggler would have just lying around in space.

Celina

 

[Celina]

Celina cast of the blanket she had wrapped around herself, shivering briefly as the cold, stale air of the cockpit but against her skin. She fast about in the darkness for a few moments before grabbing a cloak she had draped across a chair. It was a large, billowing piece of clothing, black in color, and offered little in the way of protection against the cold due to the large hood and open sleeves. It covered the rags she wore though, and for that alone it was useful. She did not want to meet whoever it was that had found her with her former slave garb on display still.

She was pulling the hood of the cloak over her head with a gleam of light caught her eye. Turning, she looked down at the hilt of the lightsaber she had procured from the Sith she had killed. She had been at first excited to have such a weapon in her possession, the weapon of a warrior and conqueror, but over the dozens of times she has wielded in on the vessel before giving up, she could not get over how wrong it felt in her hands. The hilt was too large, the Sith it had belonged to was a mountain of a man and dwarfed Celina in size and sheer weight. She had to use both hands to grip the blade, an uncomfortable stance for her. The power she felt within the blade was weakening by the day, alien to her and hateful.

She was going to leave the weapon there, but decided at the last moment to bring it with her. Heading to the airlock of the ship, she steadied herself against a bulkhead as the craft shook, likely secured within whatever ship had found her. Gritting her teeth, she tapped the command controls on the airlock, the doors sliding open frustratingly slow. Bright light bathed the corridor she stood on, purging the darkness that had held her for days. Blinking against the change, she gripped the lightsaber in both hands and ignited the blade. The snap hiss echoed through the ship as she stepped out of the craft, the hood of her cloak concealing nothing of her pale, tattooed face. She held the blade in front of her, clumsily turning it towards the three figures facing her.

“Don’t take another step!” She shouted, “I want you to tell me who you are, and what you want with me…”

Darth Strosius

 

[Darth Strosius]

Alisteri and his Legionnaires stopped stopped a bit away fromt he ship as the door slid open and revealed a cloaked figure. Before anyone could speak however said figure produced and ignited a lightsaber. A Sith's lightsaber to be exact. The Legionnaires snapped to attention and brought their blasters up to aim at the woman but a hand from the Sith prevented them from firing.

Now this was a strange sight indeed. "Calm yourself. If we wanted you dead then you wouldn't have been brought onboard." The masked man looked the cloaked woman up and down as his Legionnaires slowly lowered their weapons. "I believe I could ask you those same questions. It's not everyday that someone steps onto my ship and threatens me with a lightsaber." He chuckled, as if it was some casual affair.

"You may call me Strosius, Knight of the Sith and servant of the Dark Side. As what I want with you, well now I'd love to sit down and talk."

Celina

 

[Celina]

“There are many reasons,” she said “that one might take a being alive.” The words dripped with venom as she said them, her eyes darting between the three figures, especially on the ones with blaster trained on her. It was said that Sith and Jedi were capable of deflecting blaster bolts using lightsabers, but she doubted she could do such a thing. Who were these people? Her greatest fear was that they were slavers, either eager to secure new ‘inventory’ for their enterprise, or perhaps worse, associates of her former master come to find his property. Could that bastard of a man still haunt her life from beyond the grave?

The men before her seemed a bit too organized and well equipped to be the usual slavers and pirates she had seen going through her masters home, and that gave her pause, holding her back from launching herself forward in a desperate attempt to remain free at any cost. They had not already tried to attack her either, so she slowly lowered the weapon from the slightly upturned position she had held it in.

“Strosius…” The word lingered on her lips for a moment, and she cast a final look at the two soldiers on either side of Strosius before deactivating the blade. As the blade vanished, a puff of smoke and sparks shot out from it, shaking the weapon. Celina grimaced, holding the hilt away from herself before clipping it to her waist.

Another Sith, but unlike the first one she had met, and eventually killed, this one was not some savage, raging beast of slaughter. She had little reason to trust the man, but even less opportunity to truly resist. She nodded her head briskly, the movement shifting her black hair from the loose bun she had worn to drape about her shoulders.

“Very well.” She said, “We shall speak.”

Darth Strosius

 

[Darth Strosius]

Despite the lightsaber being pointed at him and his soldiers, the masked man gave no signs of being afraid or wary like the Legionnaires did. Keeping a straight face was a hard lesson to learn, but an invaluable one. He chose not to respond to the woman's remark, although he knew well enough what she meant. Being at the mercy of another was hardly an ideal position regardless of their intentions. Better to die in battle than be captured by an enemy.

His head tilted to the side slightly as her weapon was deactivated, letting out an odd bit of smoke and sparks for a moment too. That was odd, was it damaged in some way? It already looked far too unwieldy and unfamiliar in the woman's hands to be her weapon, but if it was damaged then there was definitely conflict involved. Perhaps she had stolen it and barely escaped? There was only one way to find out.

Alisteri nodded and crossed his arms behind his back as she agreed to talk. That was good, conversations were far better when neither participant was in chains or behind bars. "Return to your stations." He nodded to the Legionnaires who hesitated only a moment before they saluted and began making their way out of the hangar. "So, adrift in space and with a Sith's lightsaber no less. You must have quite a tale. I trust that you're willing to satisfy my curiosity in exchange for your own?"

Celina

 

[Celina]

Celina held her tongue until the two soldiers departed the hangar, her yellow eyes unblinking until the doors to the hangar finally slid closed behind them. She turned her gaze towards Strosius, reaching out with the so recently realized senses to try and learn anything she could from him. After a few more moments she nodded her head, letting her arms dangle down by her side as she leaned back against the ship she had been saved from.

"I was a slave. I do not know where I was born, who my parents were or even if they are alive. My first memories were in the slave pits, and my first real home, if you can call it that, was a moon so small and insignificant it did not have a name, and neither did I. I lived my entire life on that moon, never saw the sky or space, and had no one to truly talk to. I was so alone, except for one person..." She glanced up at Strosius, eyes hardening before she continued her story.

"Then one of you Sith came to the moon. He wanted something from my master, but I do not know what it was. He did not get it, and decided to take his frustration out on everyone there. My master died, my fellow slaves died, and the one person I cared about. I was angry...angrier than I have ever been in my life. I hunted the Sith down; he was wounded, some of the guards had gotten lucky shots in. I let my anger out, and killed him." She shook her head then, turning to really look around the hangar for the first time since her arrival. It was much better than the little ship she had taken, and until a few days ago, she had thought the ship had been a flying palace. There was so much she could not wrap her mind around.

"Everyone was dead, so I took my chance. I took the man's weapon and ship, and set out. I had earned my freedom, and I would not wait for someone, anyone, to come and take it away from me again." The last words were spoken with a dark anger, her eyes glaring at Strosius. She doubted that if the man had any ill intentions she could stop him, but she would not meekly take anything he threw at her.

Darth Strosius

 

[Darth Strosius]

Alisteri kept his gaze on Celina as his guards left the hangar, not bothering to pretend like he was looking at something else or glancing away. She had his full attention for now. He listened intently as she spoke, neither his posture nor anything that could be sensed giving away a reaction to her story. He had been right though, it was quite a tale.

The Sith was silent for a few moments after she had spoken, his masked gaze meeting her glare without faltering, and then he nodded. "Good. You know what it means to be free then. To have freedom that you've claimed with your own two hands. Such is the nature of the Sith, but those who have never lived their lives in chains will never truly understand what it means." Finally he began to move, his stance becoming far more relaxed and his guard seemingly dropping.

"I was once a slave." His voice dropped down a bit, as if it were a secret of some kind. "On Kessel, orphaned at a young age and adopted by my owner as a show of 'mercy.' But we both know how merciful slavers can be. One day pirates came and decided they liked the look of my master's property, so they raided the place and took every slave that he had. Myself included. They had me alone in some little ship, just chained up and left to stew in my thoughts. So I thought of hate, of anger, of my desire for revenge, and the next thing that I knew I was free. And standing over a body or two."

The memory made him chuckle, but he quickly returned his attention to Celina. "So, you managed to kill a Sith and take all that he had for yourself. Most would say you got lucky. I would say that you were blessed." Alisteri nodded to her ship. "That thing won't even get you to the nearest port, let alone anywhere afterwards. So I'll give you a choice Celina. You can just be dropped off on the nearest planet with enough supplies and credits to last a week or two, or you can become something far greater than a nameless slave."

He gestured to the hangar around them, as if it were some sort of incentive or promise. "You could become a Sith. You've tasted the power that the Dark Side can offer, felt how your anger can be turned into a weapon as deadly as any blaster or lightsaber. The Dark Side is a path that can lead to salvation and power, the kind which would ensure that your freedom is never threatened. So, what do you say then?"

Celina