Private My Shadow Runs With Me

[Velok Brokentusk]

From the gantry, barely concealed by the edge of the command booth, Velok watched the shuttle come to life. When the hatch opened, he felt relief and disappointed resignation in equal measure. But at his best he ruled his feelings, not the other way around. He'd determined his intention. Now he simply had to follow through.

A Force jump took him out over the hangar. The hovering shuttle rocked under his mass and grated briefly against the deck. He fit himself through the hatch and down into the cabin.

The shuttle had no seat in his size, or controls for that matter, so he crouched behind the copilot chair, headrest against his chest, and reached around it to tap the controls with the tips of his claws. The shuttle began moving through the atmospheric field into the hyperspace bubble of hard vacuum around the Longjumper's Mark.

"Well thieved," he said to Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily let out a shout of surprise as the shuttle lurched, wondering what the hell had happened before Velok squeezed through the hatch behind her. "You really are a big lump." she commented as he moved them through the bubble.

"Thanks, good distraction, whatever it was." he looked comical in a chair far too small for him and she hid her smile busying herself with controls. "If we make it out of this alive, I'm going to owe you a hell of a lot more than a measly favour from a petty thief." she passed the control for the ship to the co pilots seat. Better to let the experienced pilot get them out of here. She watched his every move, committing it to memory, in case this sort of thing were to happen again.

"Coordinates are set for Gadma station, call it when your ready."

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

"Well," said Velok absently, shifting the Niathal shuttle fully into the void, "I'll just have to have you steal something sometime. It's always useful to know a thief."

As the shuttle pivoted, he was treated to a view of a hangar in some chaos. A portable tractor beam or weapons emplacement was being set up, and he had no intention of determining which.

The coordinate setup looked solid enough on the navicomputer's readout. There'd been a time when the Niathal's nav gear was state of the art. Velok dug deep, listened to his gut, and found no instinct to guide him.

If they died...ah well.

"Shall we?"

The shuttle leaped away and into its own pseudotunnel, its own hyperspace course. The supertransport vanished behind them in an eyeblink.

Velok settled down on the deck behind the chair and let out a stressed breath.

"We made it. Now we're only...adrift in the intergalactic void. The near part of it, though. Gadma Station is just outside Companion Cresh, a..."

He disentangled himself from his thoughts. He was talking too much, maybe.

Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Relief washed over Lily and she sagged back into the chair, closing her eyes. She was not clear yet, but se was at least heading in the right direction. She groaned at the word 'adrift'. "Ugh, please don't use that word, you're going to make me throw up." she opened her eyes and gave him a small smile as he tailed off.

"Companion Cresh..." she furrowed her brow trying to recall the tiniest bit of knowledge, nothing concrete just the things you pick up when you spend a lot of time in spaceports. "Isn't that in the unknown regions?" her relief vanished, it was going to be a long trip back to known space.

"I'm sorry, for dragging you away from the peace you were seeking."

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

Velok planted his forehead against the ceiling for stability and claw-tipped his way into the nav systems again. A map display mode disgorged a flat-plane readout that showed the main galaxy and seven diverse small galaxies around it.

"The Unknown Regions are three things: the edges of our galaxy, one whole side of our galaxy, and these seven satellite galaxies. You might have heard of the two largest and closest: the Rishi Maze and Firefist, Companions Aurek and Besh.

"The next closest is Companion Cresh, and Gadma Station is its front door. From there we should find enough beacons and so forth to get back to known space."

The flight to Gadma Station was long and cramped. What else was there to do but talk?

Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily let out a small laugh. "This is completely insane. The furthest I've ever been from home was a little ocean planet in the Outer Rim. Now I'm not just between galaxies, I'm two galaxies away in a stolen shuttle with a whiphid who could pop my skull like a bad zit." She made a motion with her hands, imitating the popping of a spot, noise and all.

That was probably not a smart idea, upsetting Velok Brokentusk so she followed with a very swift and sheepish smile. "Sorry, I'm just processing...out loud."

"Can I ask you something?" she didn't wait for a reply. "Your curse, you said it was a punishment. What did you do?"

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

Velok felt himself go very still.

"I wondered how long it would take you to ask. I don't intend to tell you. Your mind is young and you already have your burdens; don't add another. But I'll tell you this much: if you learn anything from our encounter, learn that anyone you meet can do something unforgivable, something that can't be fixed. So can you, given the right circumstances and bad judgment. It's important to watch yourself so you don't need to live with something like that, something that'll change the course of your life and how you see yourself."

Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Whatever it was, it was bad and something in Velok's tone told her that pressing the issue would get her nowhere. "I grew up fighting for survival in Coruscant's underbelly, I've seen friends kill each other for something as simple as a meal. I already know what people are capable of, but I appreciate the sentiment." she got up and stretched

"For what its worth, I don't think you're a bad person. You might have done some bad things in your past, but what you do here and now is what defines you." She moved towards the cockpit door. "I'm going to take inventory of what's of value on this little boat. Wanna help?"

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

He thought of saying that the sins of ambition and the sins of desperation were very different things, but he didn't want to come off as disrespecting what she'd been through. Instead he focused on the inventory.

Much of the shuttle was difficult for him to access. He could only fit through a standard door contorted and with pain. All the catches and compartments had been designed with tiny human fingers in mind. It became very clear very quickly that the shuttle's nooks and crannies would be up to Lily Rhodes . Even so, he turned up a variety of survival gear under the seats and inside bulkhead panels. There was even a bland portable translator: a low-wattage protocol droid sans personality, keyed with a few thousand languages.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

It was an opportunity to get to know all the nooks and crannies of the shuttle they'd likely be calling home for the next few weeks, to be exceptionally nosy, routing through each of the passenger rooms. She pocketed the few credits she did find, picked the room closest to the cockpit to claim as her own and found a fresh change of clothes, pulling her hair into a messy bun, before really setting to work.

Everything that was likely to be of use, she left where it was, but the Niathal class shuttle was equipped for exploration, so beyond a few environment scanners, space suits and a few blasters for safeties sake there wasn't much, but not much was more than nothing at all. Everything that could be sold found its way into a crate that she sat at the back of the cockpit. She'd find a buyer for it easy enough, assuming Velok Brokentusk had no use for it.

Lily lost a fair amount of time in the ships small galley, going through each store cupboard doing her utmost not to lose her mind with the amount of food she suddenly had at her fingertips. She found a herbal tea blend and brewed a pot, hunting in the cupboards for a mug that was more suitable for Velok's enormous hands and came up short, so instead, she brewed him some in one of the small saucepans and carried it to him, her own mug in her hand.

"There's easily a couple of hundred credits in that crate." She mused, satisfied with their handiwork. Fingers curled about her own mug as she tucked one leg underneath her in the pilots chair "Do you think they would have found much in the Yuuzhan Vong Galaxy?"

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

Lily Rhodes had an eye for scavenging. The collected take, if sold to the right people with the right enthusiasm, could sustain a lower Coruscant street kid for weeks. Velok's finds were fewer, larger, individually more valuable but collectively less, if he was any judge.

He accepted the pot of tea and drank with gratitude, curled up in the space behind the other seat. At some point he'd need to check the seat's functions and see if he could remove it. There'd be so much more room.

"I think even if they find garbage, it's garbage no human has seen before, and that makes it priceless. From what little I know, that galaxy is full of dead and broken worlds. Or places that were destroyed at some point, anyway: I'd imagine life has found a way. There may be empires.

"So Coruscant. The noble Galactic Alliance has ruled it in peace, order, and prosperity since long before you were born. What's that been like, other than the...grinding poverty?"

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily gave a derisive snort. "Well, they run some pretty good soup kitchens. Can't say I notice much more than that, the lower levels are run by gangs, back handed deals mean the Security Corps leave well enough alone and vice versa. I'm told there's not as much territory fighting as there used to be, something to do with maintaining balance in order to keep their deals sweet."

Lily shrugged. "I saved as much as I could and hopped on a transport off world. Been spaceport hopping for the last six months, trying to find something else. Something more, I guess. What about you? You're worldly and full of knowledge, aside from running from a curse, what else have you done?"

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

"Well, I spent most of my life as the kind of man who could hear all that and think the Coruscant undercity needed some...strong leader. I'm named after my grandfather and his father. Both of them were Sith Lords. I tried that life and it was no good for me. I led raiding parties. Did mercenary work, pulled off the occasional hostage crisis or extortion scheme, all backed by research and planning."

Memories surged up, and not all bad ones. He grinned and drank deep of the tea.

"There was a time I fleeced a Jedi prince of billions."

Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Billions was a number that Lily could not comprehend. How could there possibly be people with billions in the world when she knew kids younger than her that were fighting for a single credit?! Her expression darkened at the thought. "No one should have that much money." She shook it off, when she realised that that much money passed into Velok's hands and his life wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows.

"How did you do it? Was there a team?" More importantly, how does one become a part of such a team...she could feed the entirety of Coruscant's lower levels. All those kids. She was chewing the inside of her cheek, lost in thought.

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

Even without the Force to provide suggestions, Lily Rhodes ' thoughts and feelings blared just now. Velok set the rest of the tea aside.

"I had a team, yes. A good team. I was captain of a hunt crew. We got ourselves a Whiphid Raider, two hundred fifty meters. I had an idea from a folktale and put in the work to find a place that fit: a planet with just the right atmosphere composition. Flammable. Not enough to make campfires or furnaces impossible, but a single turbolaser strike will set that whole world on fire. It could happen any day. So all I did was show up in orbit and send out a broadband subspace transmission. I told the Jedi that to save the world, I wanted...I don't even remember the number. This must be fifty years ago. I knew there was royalty among the Jedi, and billionaire industrialists. They tried to outwit me and failed. One of them paid up in full.

"I flew away, paid my crew, and used the bulk of it to build my people. The Whiphids, see, Lily...we are seen with contempt. We needed safe places and strength. The money went toward our towns, our settlements, our ships, our movement from world to world, our weapons. A people to be taken seriously. A people who couldn't be erased."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily studied Velok for a long minute trying to understand what he could have possibly done to deserve such a curse. Okay, so he held an entire planet hostage, but the outcome meant that his people could survive, gain a foothold. His intentions came from a good place, so why was he being pursued and punished so much. It was gnawing at her.

"Would you have done it?" she asked softly "If they hadn't paid you?"

Maybe that would give her the answer she needed.

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Oops

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

"No. I knew had to leave the decision unmade or the Jedi might sense a possible future where it was a bluff, or sense my intent, or pull some other trick of intuition...but in my heart of hearts, no, I wouldn't have done it. It would have been petty and useless and pointlessly destructive, contemptible even to the Sith I was. It would have made me a target, more than it did. Offended Jedi were tracking me down for years afterward — imagine how much more aggressive that pursuit would have been if I'd actually hurt anyone that day. I saw all that as clear as you see me now. So: no."

All of this was true.

Lily Rhodes

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily wanted to scream, it didn't make any sense. She wanted to ask again what he could have possibly done, but she knew she wasn't going to get an answer. Maybe with time he'd tell her...Maybe.

"I believe you." she replied with equal honesty. "I also am starting to believe that the Jedi are not the angelic knights in shining armour they are painted to be in all the holovids and news."

She hid a yawn behind her mug, leaning her head back against the chair and closing her eyes, with a heavy sigh. "If there was a way to break your curse, would you take it?"

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

He flinched. "I ask myself that question every few days. The answer changes. I know three ways it could probably be done — special skills from a Jedi Master, a Lord of the Sith, or a Whiphid elder of the Toglannoq, We Who Walk the Ice. I don't know if I would accept. All I know for certain is that I haven't sought them out in over twenty years, not for this. Seeking them out feels like it would be letting myself off the hook for reasons as selfish as what brought on my curse in the first place. I carry the burden I worked for. To put it down would be weak. It would compound my dishonor. It would say I've learned nothing."

Lily Rhodes