Star Wars: The Sith War - Fiction: Nothing Goes the Way It Should

[Gareth Padawan]

The Rodian hadn't told Gareth anything he didn't know already.

"Today's not your day, pink one." The muscles in the spacer's face flexed into what passed amongst Rodians as an expression of pleasure as his fingers tightened around the handle of his blaster. "All your credits and maybe I shoot you not-fatal. Maybe not. Dashek not know pink one anatomy so much." He made a gurgling sound that was indicative of laughter.

Gareth had credits, of course, albeit not many on him at the time. As much as he'd tried to leave his life of privilege behind and embrace the ascetic purity of the Jedi, as much as he was dedicated to the Jedi Code, well, years visiting Coruscant had shown him the wisdom of having a little 'emergency money'. His was in his boot; he could feel it when he wiggled his big toe. And honestly, the Rodian was welcome to it. But he wasn't welcome to threaten him. Not today.

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Master Sanesh never saw the blaster fire coming. A shot that was intended for his Padawan had struck him in the back of the head as he'd been fending off a barrage of luminescent bolts coming from his front. The Quarren who'd fired the shot had been trying to cripple the child, not kill the Jedi, but to his delight, his reticle was off just enough. One lucky shot, one dead Jedi. Maybe that would tell the Council that the Black Sun's business on far-off planets was best left alone. All that remained was to dispatch the child.

Nearly everything that can be found in the Galaxy can be found on Nar Shaada, but the bulk of it first came from somewhere else. Salvage from Korriban, antiquities from Dantooine, spice from Naboo, and so on, and so on, and so on. And slaves. Slaves from Endor and Mandalore and Kashyyyk and a hundred other planets you care to name. Today it was the still-growing surface of Telos, a planet that had seen more than its share of ruination over the centuries. The Ithorians who dwelled on the surface had been working tirelessly to reintroduce native flora and fauna to the planet in a desperate bid for ecological revivification. But where there was rare fauna to be found, invariably, there would come slavers to follow.

Gareth and his Master had been assigned to Telos by the Council, ostensibly on a mission of peace and reconnaissance. The objective was to find out who the slavers were working for, and, ideally, to free any sentient captives. It was to be Gareth's first assignment, but in the charge of Master Sanesh, they were more than capable.

And now, Sanesh was gone.

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He had only meant to hit the Rodian's blaster. His lightsabre form was sloppy, careless, too deliberate. Sanesh told him a hundred times that his poor form was going to get someone killed if he didn't improve. Turns out that Sanesh was right, too: the Rodian gurgled out a trilling noise that sounded like a scream, impotently clutching the charred edge of his body where Sanesh's lighsabre - Gareth had grabbed it in a panic as he made good his escape, his own having been taken from him moments before his Master had rushed in to deflect the flurry of fire that was meant for him - had cleaved him from collar to hip, removing his blaster, blaster arm, and a good chunk of his torso, to boot.

It was the first time in his life that Gareth had harmed another living creature. The feeling made him almost sick. He bade the Force to calm him, but his own resolve was faltering already, and he vomited, his senses mustering only enough will to turn off his Master's lightsabre before he threw his hands up to rest against the nearby wall. Dazed and choking, he stumbled away from the scene, back to the oblivious throngs of passersby going about their business on Telos Citadel Station. One pained step after another, he made his way back to the rented room Sanesh had procured for them as their base of operations, a spartan dwelling and a short walk from the shuttle bay to the planet's surface, and fell down upon the slab that had served as his bed, feeling an undeserved sense of comfort and safety. The slavers were still on his trail, and could burst through the door at any moment. He knew he had to act, but for the moment, all he could muster was a feeling of blissful release as the sensation of false safety, even as the day's proceedings ground upon his mind and his heart.

[Lori]

Ord Mantell seemed to be little more than a distant dream by this point in Ingo’s life. He couldn’t really remember the feel or the smell of the dry desert winds as they blew across the Mantellian backcountry he had called home all his life. Nor could he clearly remember the taste of roasted gulnak, nor the sounds of the flutterplumes as they floated overhead. He was finding it increasingly difficult to remember the face of his father, and he had all but forgotten the faces of his other companions within the Guri Ma.

For several weeks after his capture at the hands of the Rodian hunting party that had decimated his father and the other Guri Ma adepts he had been traveling with, Ingo’s whole world had consisted of little more than the reinforced cage they had kept him in. They had seemed quite pleased to have captured him, and even without understanding a word they were saying, he could see that they were showing him off to anyone brave enough to approach his cage. At first Ingo had thought that they were merely treating him like an animal, and given his enraged behavior, he could hardly blame them, but he soon realized that they honestly believed him to be little more than a beast.

Under other circumstances, Ingo might have found this to be darkly comedic. Apparently such minor details as the handcrafted Savrip clothing on his back (little more than rags after all this time), or his bellowed insults and challenges were not enough to tip these ugly, tiny little monsters off to the fact that he was intelligent. Of course, Ingo had no way of knowing that his bellowed insults and challenges sounded like nothing more than the howls and roars of an enraged beast, and nothing at all like any language the Rodians were familiar with. As for the clothing, who knows what they thought?

Ingo rapidly ran out of words or even basic concepts to describe the beings, beasts, and mysterious objects that he encountered as the days of his enslavement wore on. He was taken into the belly of what he first believed to be a terrifying beast made entirely of metal, but which he quickly realized was only an overgrown tool of the hunters, much like those they rode on when traveling the wilds of his homeworld, or even those they used to launch their beams of scalding light. Some unknown span of time passed, during which Ingo nearly starved as the food he was given was barely enough to support a being of his size, and then he was disgorged from the belly of the giant machine, and found himself to be in a strange land. It was like no place he had ever heard or dreamed of.

It was like a village, only a thousand – a hundred thousand! – times greater in size than any village he had ever heard of. The dwelling places of the alien beings who called this place home were like mountains made of metal and light, so huge were they. It was Chinesti, capital of Phaeda, a filthy and corrupt world much frequented by filthy and corrupt beings from all over the Galaxy’s spacelanes, and it was the first true city Ingo had ever seen. It was at once beautiful and terrible beyond anything his primitive mind had ever imagined. It was all enough to make even a Savrip feel small and insignificant by comparison.

Once he was unloaded from the Rodians’ ship, Ingo was soon taken inside of a large warehouse that served as a holding pen for some unknown, but definitely large, number of fellow slaves. Growing up with his clan in the deserts of Ord Mantell, Ingo had only the dimmest understanding of the existence of other worlds, and no understanding at all of the vastness of space or the sheer number of intelligent beings that inhabited it. Now, confronted with a strange new world, much more densely populated than any place he had ever seen, and seeing the myriad number and variety of fellow slaves surrounding him, Ingo began to understand the immensity of the crime he had fallen victim to, and his sense of grief, anger, and confusion grew proportionately.

As when he was caged within the belly of the strange flying machine, Ingo lost all track of time while chained within the slave pens of Chinesti, and so he had no way of knowing how long he had been there when he was finally sold. A human by the name of Kam Cotae had eagerly agreed to the price the Rodians were asking for a live Mantellian Savrip, and was eager to try his new prize out within the various illegal gladiatorial circuits scattered throughout the Rim. Not for nothing was the Savrip considered the most powerful piece on a dejarik board, and Cotae fully expected to win Ingo’s cost several times over in prizefighting money.

Another trip in one of the strange flying machines.

By this point Ingo had come to understand that these ships traversed the heavens between worlds (although his concept of both “worlds” and “heavens” was still not what a fully educated being from one of the core worlds would call “fully formed”), but he still did not know where these strange objects came from originally, nor did he have any idea of how they were formed. They, like nearly everything else on his strange and fantastic journey, simply were and there was nothing Ingo could do but accept their existence. Eventually they arrived at their destination, and Ingo was once again unloaded and led like a beast to yet another slave pen.

Ingo never saw anything of this new world, other than the loading yards where his master’s ship was docked, the slave pens, and the fighting ring with which he was soon to become all too familiar, but even if he had it would have been nothing more than yet another alien (albeit exotic and beautiful) world to him. And so, Ingo never realized that the world he was to spend most of the next year on (by his own Mantellian reckoning) was actually a moon. Number four of twenty-six moons, to be exact, and all of them orbiting around a gas giant called Yavin.

For many months on end Ingo’s life revolved entirely around surviving one grueling death match after another against dozens of opponents, both sentient and bestial. By the time Kam Cotae took his prize slave and left the moon of Yavin 4 for greener pastures, Ingo had faced off against dozens of sentients including Aqualish, a pack of Bartokk (although Ingo would have argued their qualification for the title of “sentient”), a Cragmoloid (one of the few sentient species to present a real challenge in physical combat), Gamorreans (overrated), Houk, a couple of Myneyrsh (one of the most exotic species Ingo has run across to date), a Yuzzem (even tougher than the Cragmoloid), and a few Wookiees (worthy opponents, but no match for Ingo’s size or strength). But Kam discovered early that the crowds were much more interested in pitting a Savrip against the Galaxy’s most dangerous and terrifying predators and monsters (after all, as far as most beings were concerned, a Savrip was one a dangerous predator). So Ingo was repeatedly put up against every terrifyingly monstrous opponent the pit organizers could get their hands on. The narglatch was a challenge, the juvenile rancor they put him against proved a truly dangerous foe, and the ithorian dragon they brought in nearly killed him. But the worst was the doashim; it tore him to shreds, he only just barely survived, and he was terrified throughout the entire ordeal.

What made Ingo’s time in the gladiator ring an even tougher ordeal was his refusal to call upon Ateng to aid him in his battles. They were dishonorable, and often woefully unfair matches, staged entirely for the perverse pleasure of the sadistic beings who owned them all, and Ingo refused to sully the sacred traditions of his ancestors by using the power of the Guri Ma to kill mindless beasts and ragged slaves. He would rather have died than stoop so low. Finally, though, the day came when Kam Cotae felt that the gladiator pit on Yavin 4 had yielded all that it had to offer him, and he had Ingo loaded into another cage, and back onto his ship for another voyage through the heavens.

During his time on Yavin 4, Ingo had watched his captors and handlers very closely and listened very attentively as they spoke to each other and went about their business. As a result, Ingo slowly learned to understand the most commonly spoken language among them, Galactic Basic, as it was named in its own words. With careful practice, when no one was present to hear or observe, Ingo learned to speak the language as well, if poorly. He was very careful to keep this talent, along with his Guri Ma abilities, a secret from his captors, and let them continue to think of him as little more than a dumb beast. Meanwhile, Ingo had been busy learning all he could about his situation, the Galaxy at large, and what might be the best way of escaping and finding his way back home to his own people. When he first began to truly understand just how far from home he was, and just how difficult it be for him to ever return, Ingo almost gave up all hope, and it took all the discipline developed through decades of hard training not to.

And so it was that when Kam Cotae and he left aboard Cotae’s ship, Ingo knew that they were going to a planet called Telos, though little else besides. He also knew that when they arrived, his master was to meet up with other slavers, and there was a possibility of yet more of the hated death matches, but also a possibility of his being sold yet again (a thought that was only marginally more appealing than the death matches). It seemed his master was at a minor crossroads in his life, and was searching for the best course on which to set his future. Ingo thought that his master’s best coarse would be directly into the heart of the nearest sun, but he doubted Kam would give such advice the appreciation it deserved, so he kept his thoughts to himself. Soon enough they would be arriving on Telos, and Ingo would be on the lookout for any and every opportunity to escape, and begin his journey home.