Private Worth A Shot

[Inanna Harth]

Unnamed planet in the Outer Rim

“Argh, not again!”

Miri’s cries devolved into coughing as her starfighter’s engine began to smoke, then burst into flames. She backed away from the downed vessel, waving her hands in front of her face, then scrambled for a fire extinguisher. Once the flames were taken care of, she peered cautiously at the smoldering wreckage, grimacing.

The whole thing was shot to hell. There was no way she was repairing it here on this backwater with only her toolkit. Parts needed to be replaced, and she had no replacements on hand.

Sinking down on a nearby log, she wiped beads of sweat from her brow. Her ship had crashed in a hot, humid swamp. Not exactly the healthiest of survival conditions, especially with all the insects flying around potentially carrying deadly diseases.

Swatting at a cloud of gnats, she checked her supplies. Enough rations for a few days. Long-range communications were gone, short-range worked but so far she hadn’t contacted any other ships in the area. There might be some sort of settlement around here, maybe a place where she could get the parts she needed, but she had no guarantee the locals would be friendly. Still, it was worth a shot…

A groaning noise coming from her ship caught her attention. She leaped to her feet in a panic, only to find the ground beneath her far too soft to stand on. Falling backwards, she watched in horror as the starfighter began to sink in quicksand.

“No no no! Please no—!”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"Come on you little chit!"

Laborious tugging finally bore fruit, a sudden loss of resistance threw Zaavik onto his back with a fleshy thud. Within his hands, an astrogation bank was gripped intently, sparking lightly at the ends of severed wires. In the case of this vessel, it wasn't ever meant to be removed, but that fact served only as an obstacle, rather than a deterrent. He was hardly concerned with how carefully he handled modifications to one of Vesta's ships. At the very least, for the sake of the plan, his workaround wouldn't render the craft totally bricked.

Aradia insisted he wipe all the data he could, make the ship an untraceable ghost. The astrogation bank was only one of several things that needed to be to be reset. Zaavik stood with a groan, throwing the device up and catching it like a ball. Pinched fingers pacified the lingering, sparking energy on every wire-tip before he discarded it into a tool tray.

Something tickled his peripheral vision. He looked up, through the cockpit viewports. A ship. Not jus any ship, a crashing ship. Who the hell would be flying out around here? Paranoia asserted it was someone coming for him. Even if that was the case, they didn't appear to be on luck's good side. He would have ignored it, he probably should have, but the need for parts in his own ship sowed a mischief in his mind. If he was lucky and could manage salvage the right parts, his own clunker wouldn't be such a deathtrap anymore.

It was an idea. A good idea? That was yet to be determined, but it was something. Rational voices told him he should wait for his partner to return before pursuing the crash site. In case of survivors, or trouble. Alas, that voice could hardly speak over the shouts of impulse.


Repulsor engines fired, the old treadspeeder coming to life for the first time since he'd originally fixed it when they initially found the place. His fist torqued the throttle, sending him splashing and bumping across mud, swamp, and branch. A best estimate on the ships trajectory was the only indicator of direction he had.

It would take nearly twenty minutes before the smoked looked close. He killed the engines several hundred meters back, skulked forward slowly across protruding, burled tree roots.

“No no no! Please no—!”

Of course. Someone made it. Zaavik was more concerned with being recognized than empathy. Weaving around a gnarled trunk, he could see the blazing, sinking ship juxtaposed in front of the brown mire and green canopies. The source of the voice centered with in his vision. He nearly pulled his saber.

It's just a kid.

Kid, he thought, although the difference between them looked like it couldn't have been more than five years. Still, comparatively, a teenage girl wasn't the threat he was worried about. Conveniently, he didn't let himself remember the amount of injuries he'd sustained from a certain former teenage girl once upon a time. That thinking wouldn't be good for his concerns, which suddenly swapped. Incognito wasn't worth letting a fifteen or sixteen year old drown in mud.

"Hey!" he shouted.

Tightroping on a thin root above the mud, he inched closer, dropped down to balance on it toes-and-hand like some kind of ape. One hand free itself off the root and extended toward the stranger in aid, who didn't appear to realize she was potentially in the same kind of sinking mire she was losing her ship to. "Relax. I gotcha. Move slow, or you're gonna sink too."

 

[Inanna Harth]

Through the panicked heat of the moment, Miri had just enough cognizance to notice that a voice was calling to her. Where had he come from? Who was he? Who cares? In the seconds that had passed between noticing her ship being swallowed up, falling on her rear, and the stranger’s arrival, she had scrambled to her feet again only to sink to her ankles in the mire.

“Relax.”

His command served as a reminder. Jedi training kicked in. She forced herself to calm down, at least enough that she could think straight. The stranger meanwhile made his way toward her, using a root as a tightrope, and stretched out a hand.

Well, she wasn’t one to refuse an offer of help, even if she was sure she could’ve gotten to safety on her own. Taking his hand, she gradually pulled herself up until she could grasp the root—on second thought, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, given that his weight was already hanging off it. Both of them simultaneously might break it.

“Go back,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “I can climb on this thing too.”

Once he had made room, she hoisted herself onto the root and shimmied towards the shore. Behind her, she could hear escaping air bubbles rising as her starfighter drowned, but there was little she could do about it at the moment.

When they were on more solid ground, she got a proper look at her rescuer. He was a young man, probably a Zeltron, and while he looked a little rough around the edges, he didn’t exactly scream hermit-stuck-in-the-swamp-for-twenty-years. Had weird glowing orange eyes too... freaky. Apart from that weirdness, nothing about his appearance told her where he was from. Her own appearance was telling enough. Clad in a mud-smeared orange flight suit, there was a Silver Jedi insignia visible on her shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said, still a little breathless. “Are you… Is there a settlement or an outpost around here?”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Jedi.

If the insignia on her suit hadn't given it away, her unshielded presence would have.

Zaavik's right eye twitched. Forced deadpan kept an oncoming reactionary sneer at bay. Despite the obvious tell of what he likely was, she seemed to have little reaction. Had she not noticed, or did she not know any better? He wouldn't make the mistake of assuming her naïve in case of a ruse. Although, she did feel even younger in the force than she looked in age.

Still, those were no grounds to let his guard down. Can't risk it.

The lack of any further lamentation for her craft put Zaavik on edge.

"Not anywhere close," he replied. Aside from the safehouse he'd come from, there was very little of anything on this damp rock. There was a mining facility somewhere, and a small city even farther away, but none of them were within a day's reach without a ship.

"You just crashed in the most nowhere of nowheres. That I know of, at least."

 

[Inanna Harth]

A settlement would have meant help. Access to communication devices, cables with which she might fish her ship out of the swamp, spare parts to repair the broken down, mud-choked ones. Realizing such wouldn’t be possible, she sighed, her lips curling in a grim smirk.

“Well…” She removed one filthy glove and held out her bare hand. It was a rather dainty thing, her hand, lily-white, manicured and, if he bothered to shake it, soft to the touch. “My name is Miri Nimdok. I didn’t mean to crash in the most nowhere of nowheres, but I had an engine malfunction of some kind…”

Feeling a bit stupid (who crashes their ship on purpose?), she glanced over her shoulder at the wrecked starfighter, cringing. “...and I had to make an emergency landing.”

Facing him again, she saw him in a new light. The eerie orange glow to his eyes seemed more vivid, almost frightening in their intensity. There was a distinct familiarity to his features too, as if she had seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place a name to the face. She only had a vague feeling that the association was negative. Still, he was all she had in this situation so far.

“If there are no settlements nearby, what are you doing out here?”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Indifferent regard lingered on the outstretched hand. Very clear hesitation made him slowly double-take before landing back on casual eye contact. A half-assed wave floated to his left side, aluminiferous fingers sounding off with mechanical squeals. "Kevin," he introduced. The go-to fake name he'd been using since he was a teenager.

“...and I had to make an emergency landing.”

Zaavik leaned to look around Miri toward the sparsely rising bubbles in the mire. "I noticed."

“If there are no settlements nearby, what are you doing out here?”

Chit.

"Surface survey and cartography. AvCorp's planning to build a fracking station here."

Nailed it.

"You're a long way out yourself, you know? Twenty parsecs from the nearest tip of Concord space."

 

[Inanna Harth]

She let her hand drop awkwardly, wondering if the vague sense of annoyance she got from him had anything to do with her Concord affiliation. Or maybe her name. Dad was quite the character

“I was looking for my father.”

No more information was offered than that.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any rope, would you Mister Kevin? Or a long-range communications device?”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

That didn't really make anything clear. Was he supposed to know her father?

"No," he lied. "Well, a rope, maybe, but-" He paused, still omitting his possession of a comms device. Again, he leaned to surveil where her ship used to be.

"You don't think you can really just pull it to the surface, do you?"

Getting people out when they were only waist deep was already hard enough. What in the hell did she think a rope would accomplish? Was he missing something?

Zaavik guessed 'up chit creek' probably wasn't a phrase she was familiar with.

 

[Inanna Harth]

It did seem suspicious that a surveyor wouldn’t have a comm device, but if he was not willing to be forthcoming about it, she couldn’t force him to cough one up.

“I could try to pull it to the surface without a rope.” She hesitated, gesturing vaguely. “I’m a Jedi. I have the Force. It’s just that, we’re not supposed to use the Force unless we absolutely have to, and if there was even a chance that a rope would suffice…”

She trailed off, feeling even more foolish. “It probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

The ship gave a gurgle of agreement.

“Are you sure you don’t have a—” Her words died on her lips as she turned to him again. Third look’s the charm. “Hey, wait a minute—you’re that guy!”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

“Hey, wait a minute—you’re that guy!”

Every muscle froze halfway into a back-turn to head toward the treadspeeder. That was, every muscle aside from the arm that furtively grasped around a lightsaber concealed under his jacket. Suddenly, his good intentions were banished into a temporal purgatory.

"What guy?" he asked, feigning ignorance. For what it was worth, he was an incredible actor. Although, he was well aware such a thing only went so far when someone already had him pegged for who he was.

Maybe luck would dictate she was naïve after all.

You don't want this, kid.

Damn. Why hadn't he just waited? Internal self-admonishments waited on the filament, ready to erupt with the outcome of his final attempt.

 

[Inanna Harth]

The guy who won the butt contest, Miri was sorely tempted to reply. She and a couple of friends from the academy had discovered that little tidbit after curiously looking up the NJO’s latest turncoat, and spent the next ten minutes giggling over the fact that such a competition even existed.

She didn't mention it, though. He was already on edge, and humor might not land well. Besides, she couldn’t just leave a fugitive fallen Jedi to go about his business... even if it was to her benefit to do so. To use the harmless, silly contest's infamy as a save and get herself out of the position of judge, jury, and executioner.

“The guy who fell to the Dark Side,” she said softly. Now the creepy orange eyes made sense. It was Dark Side corruption. “You’re Zekk Perl. You killed a senator.” She winced, realizing her mistake. “I’m sorry, your name is Zaavik, right?”

In addition to the name confusion, she thought that he had killed DARKCOM rather than Ido Bastra. For an outsider to the GA, all their political intrigues tended to blur together, the details lost.

“Why did you do it? What happened to you?”

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Damn it.

She already had him pegged for who he was. "I have no idea who or what you're talking about," he insisted anyway. No deception resonated off his claim. That wasn't the intention.

"You got me taken for someone else," he continued.

Take the hint.

"Unless you think you hit your head on the way down, we shouldn't stick around. The nearest way off this rock is still farther than chit."

Forget this face.

 

[Inanna Harth]

“I didn’t hit my head,” she replied, raising a slanted eyebrow and planting her hands on her hips. “Even if I wasn’t sure it was you, I can read it in your eyes and in your voice. You’ve fallen.”

She almost made it sound like he had tripped over his shoelaces, or somebody had stuck their foot out in front of him at the last moment, causing him to stumble—or some other unfortunate accident. Sighing, she pursed her lips and slung her pack over her shoulder.

“You remember what it was like to be a Jedi, don’t you? Then you understand why I don’t trust you at all. I’d probably be better off going on my own.” She stepped away, putting some distance between them. “I don’t suppose you could point me in a general direction, at least?”

The obvious didn’t need to be stated. Once she reached civilization, she would rat him out.

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

A long, drawn-out sigh huffed from Zaavik's lungs.

Why don't they ever take the hint?

"Maybe you are naïve." His tone, posture, and expression all soured at once. "I was trying to help you, thought maybe you'd pick up on that and forget I was here in return." Not everyone had an ear for those kinds of hints. Something told him she wouldn't have taken him up on it regardless.

Jedi.

Crimson screeched out of a quick-drawn hilt. Undulating, the blade droned blood and thunder. "If that's not in the cards, then the only general direction you need to know is that of the nearest ditch."

A flourish ended with the blade pointing toward Miri. Accusative, bloodthirsty, it stared her down with inanimate malice. He wouldn't get any pleasure out of this, but his options had been weighed the moment he saw there was a survivor.

"It's not too late to reconsider."

 

[Inanna Harth]

Red light filled the immediate area around him. Red was a powerful color, a symbolic shade. Miri squinted her eyes against it, taking another step backwards.

“Forget it, Mr. Perl. You know you wouldn’t have let me go. The Dark wouldn’t have let you. It would be too risky.” Albeit for good reason, but that didn’t excuse the fact he was down to murder her for his own sake.

She had no illusions about being able to defeat him in battle, but he probably had a ship somewhere nearby. If she could fend him off just enough to get to it, she could leave this planet and strand him here. Then he wouldn’t even have a chance to try and escape before… Oho.

Now that was a plan.

“You know I’m not going to strike first," she said, weirdly serene. She didn't even have her lightsaber out yet.

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

“Forget it, Mr. Perl. You know you wouldn’t have let me go. The Dark wouldn’t have let you. It would be too risky.”

A sneer cracked across his face. "Whatever, believe what you want," he dismissed. All she had to do was stop asking questions, let him get her off this swamprock, and he'd be gone before anyone could come looking. Just like Yula Perl had, this idiot was causing all the problems for herself. "You're dug in, anyway."

“You know I’m not going to strike first."

"I've got all day," Zaavik quipped. A stroke of his saber severed the root they shared just in front of him. Quicksand and mire swallowed it with a voracity uncharacteristic of sediment. Mud still hadn't settled from her sinking ship, made the slush volatile.

"You don't."

 

[Inanna Harth]

Miri didn’t take her eyes off of him as he slashed at the root. Truth be told, she didn’t think she could afford to look away. She heard sucking sounds coming from the greedy mud below, unpleasant and nerve-wracking.

But she was calm, for now. The Force was with her. She just wished she was a little closer to solid ground. She didn’t think she could make it if she tried to jump across the mire, even with a telekinetic boost. That meant the only way out of this was through Mr. Perl.

She unhooked her lightsaber from her belt. The hilt was almost gaudy—copper and chrome panels inlaid with pearl, and a star-shaped emitter from which erupted a violet blade.

The gap he had made between them presented a barrier that placed her at a disadvantage. Her end of the root terminated in hungry mud, and judging from the way it was creaking under her feet, it wouldn’t hold her weight for much longer. Still with her eyes on him, Miri felt around her with the Force, looking for something in the environment she could use to turn the tide in her favor...

She flung her lightsaber upwards, over his head, directing the blade to slash through the branches of the tree whose root they were standing on. She hoped to either send wood and leaves crashing down upon him, or at the very least to knock him back enough that she could jump across the gap.

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

An inkling of falling leaves flashed in Zaavik's mind. Sharp pain on the crown of his head punctuated it before he could react. Crimson screamed a wide arc, crashing through what remained of falling branches with a sharp sizzle. Magmatic eyes pierced the gaps in falling foliage, thrusting an invisible lance of vexation toward the Jedi across from him.

Free hand reached up to check. When it returned before his regard, there was blood. Gaze returned to Miri, nostrils flaring with a roil. Bloody fingers snapped upward, reaching out between then. Hatred condensed at his fingertips, shot out as jagged, white-hot currents of lightning. Three stray bolts arced early, wildly in uncontrolled directions. Their impacts upon the canopy sparked fires.

Remaining bolts continued to fly, not intent on weaving off course.

 

[Inanna Harth]

With a satisfying thwack, the branch landed squarely on Mr. Perl’s head. It hadn’t hit him hard enough to knock him off the root, as she had hoped, but he was distracted. She leaped across the gap while he was feeling the blood trickling from his brow, catching her returning lightsaber along the way.

The air crackled around them, electricity bursting from his fingertips. She raised her blade to catch it. Violet plasma flared erratically as she grinded the lightning. It wouldn’t hold for long. She started to inch forward, hoping he was so consumed with his hatred (or blinded by the flare of electricity?) to notice she was getting even closer.

Meanwhile, the swamp was catching fire around them. It wasn’t a bad guess that the marshes produced flammable gases as well as plenty of wood to burn.

“Yeah, turn the whole place into an inferno!” she exclaimed through grit teeth. “Kill us both while you’re at it! Typical Sith—”

Her flickering blade still up, she suddenly lunged forward and headbutted him.

Zaavik Perl​

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"I'm not a S-!"

Sudden impact flashed white over his vision. Cartilage crunched, balance faltered, off-red blood ejected on impact. Zaavik nearly plummeted into the mire, wobbling against gravity to remain on the root. Gibberish articulations, consonant-heavy and trilled, rasped out of his mouth in a surprised rasp. Explicit slights toward the feminine of which were the foulest the Zeltron language had ever conceived.

Red fingers snatched outward, seizing fabric from the flight suit within an inhuman grip. Rage rippled behind a clench-toothed growl. He yanked, threw his own head forward in total disregard to whether or not he'd sustained any injury. Perls being hard-headed was a reality that seemingly went beyond the metaphorical, as Miri would suddenly learn as a Zeltron forehead sheened with sweat threatened to crash into her nose and teeth.