Chapter Text
Muunilinst
The Last Day
San Hill was seated in his office at his preposterously large desk, idly enjoying the view from his window instead of doing anything about the stacks of datapads, credit notes and durasheet documents before him. The intercomm beeped for his attention, and he accepted the call with an annoyed sneer. “What is it? I’m incredibly busy right now.”
But instead of the expected pleasant vocabulator of his secretary droid, a thick cough burst over the line like static, followed by a familiar, growling voice. “Clear your schedule, San Hill.”
The Muun sat up straight as a duranium beam, but remained calm. He depressed the transmission switch. “Good afternoon, Grievous. What, exactly, are you doing on this line? Did something happen to my secretary droid?”
“Yes. I did. I’m coming in.”
San Hill had no time to process what had been said before the door to his office slid open and Qymaen entered. Or, rather, the first thing that entered was the head of his secretary droid, tossed into the room with casual indifference to bounce and shed a series of sparks in its path before rolling inert at the foot of Hill’s desk. Then Qymaen followed, dropping the rest of the droid’s body to crumple rather pathetically in the doorway.
“Well, that seems unnecessary,” remarked the Chairman, bone-dry, determined to do no more than lift a cool eyebrow as the Kaleesh tramped forward with a flourish of his armorweave cloak and a glint of barely-contained fury in his hard glare. “What did that dear thing ever do to you?”
“We need to talk,” snapped Qymaen, having no interest in entertaining Hill’s typical glib attitude.
“Then by all means, my old friend, do sit down.”
A strangled laugh. “I intend to keep this brief.”
“Then we are of the same mind,” rejoined the Muun with a crooked smile. “Well, to what do I owe this pleasurably brief visit? I believe you just came back from an assignment, didn’t you?”
Qymaen loomed over the desk, leveling a forbidding glower over his crossed arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d approached San Hill with such unabashed menace—had he ever dared?—but he no longer feared repercussions. He feared nothing. “I am taking a leave of absence and returning to Kalee immediately.”
San Hill, for his part, remained unfazed. “Oh, that’s quite impossible.”
“Then know that I am simply taking a leave of absence,” Qymaen pivoted. “Where I go shouldn’t matter.”
Small, shrewd eyes met Qymaen’s scowl with impunity. “Denied. I’m surprised at you, Grievous. I’d assumed you knew the folly of making such a request, particularly in such an insolent manner.”
“This,” said Qymaen, “is no request.”
To his irritation, San Hill’s confidence remained unshaken, and the Chairman tilted his head with a snide, withering smirk. “Since I know you still struggle with complex Basic even now, allow me to put this in plain terms. You pledged your service to the InterGalactic Banking Clan until your planet’s debts are repaid. Until every last cent is accounted for, you belong to me. You are not going anywhere, for any length of time, without my explicit permission, and I am telling you now: you do not have my permission to return to Kalee.”
“I belong to no one.” Qymaen’s teeth bared in remonstration, a sharp sieve for his sibilant words. “And I’m not asking for permission.”
“You are so eager to pitch a tantrum, now, after all these years?” Heat finally crept into San Hill’s voice. “You’ve known from the start that business conducted on or in relation to Kalee would be construed as a conflict of interest, and you have wisely complied with the stipulations set in your contract. If you break your contract—”
“My contract!” Qymaen burst out, the snarl tearing at his throat and jostling a thick cough from his chest. “A contract built on trust—and you have broken that trust, San Hill. Why was I not told that Kalee has been broadcasting a message asking about me?!”
The startled flicker across San Hill’s face told Qymaen all he needed to know. The Muun recovered quickly, though too late. “The IGBC has the authority to regulate all incoming and outgoing communications by our agents. Unauthorized use of equipment is impermissible. This was also in your contract, Grievous.”
Qymaen dropped his arms stiffly to his sides, balled fists hovering quite close to his weapon holsters. “Then there was no breach of my contract,” he said sarcastically, “seeing as I was fortunate enough to get my hands on someone else’s subspace transceiver in order to receive a message from Kalee.”
“Ah. So it would seem.” San Hill’s eyes flicked downward. “Would you care to tell me who was so magnanimous as to grant you access to their transceiver?”
“A more important question,” Qymaen spat, “is whether you sent any of my messages home at all? Kalee claims to have heard nothing from me—which I would have thought was because they simply could not receive such messages—but if you misled me about Kalee being unable to communicate, why should I believe you wouldn’t lie about this, as well?”
One of San Hill’s hands drifted to the edge of his desk and slipped underneath, bony index finger poised near a panic button. “You were told we received no responses from Kalee. That was the truth.”
“Oh, of course. If you never sent my messages to begin with, how could they send ‘responses’? Truth, you say? All you ever do is twist the truth to your liking, you—you two-faced coward. How can I trust a single word that comes out of your disgusting mouth?” He slammed his hands on the Chairman’s desk; the Muun’s finger twitched. “You have been lying to me for eight years.”
“Stars above, there’s no need for such dramatics. News from Kalee would only have distracted you from the job at hand—precisely as it is doing now,” insisted Hill. “The IGBC has only ever wanted your undivided focus and loyalty. Steps were taken to obtain it. It’s no more or less simple a matter than that.”
Qymaen’s claws dug grooves into the desk’s surface as he leaned forward. “How many messages from back home never made it to me? As many as mine never made it there? I had sent dozens of messages to my comrades—my friends—my family—I stopped when it seemed they had forgotten me—you wanted me to think they had forgotten me?!”
San Hill’s words tripped with too much haste from his nervous lips as he scrambled to maintain composure, babbling to distract the incensed Kaleesh as he pressed the panic button over and over. “Have you been drinking on assignment again, Grievous? I hope you know any impairment won’t excuse your actions here. Do be careful. We wouldn’t want you to do something you might later regret.”
And, for no reason Qymaen could determine in his present state of mind, he’d finally had enough.
“Regret?”
With a swift motion and in a flurry of durasheet memos, Qymaen propelled himself across the desk and snatched the front of the Chairman’s tunic. Levering upright, he hauled San Hill up face-to-face, snarling mere centimeters from his rightly petrified expression.
“The only regret I have is selling my soul to spineless scum like you.”
“Security—!” San Hill managed to gasp out.
Qymaen drove the Muun down onto his desk, bashing his head hard enough to render him instantly unconscious, then gave his limp form a scornful fling in the direction of his chair. San Hill draped briefly over the seat before sliding and collapsing to the ground in a boneless heap. He glowered down at him long enough to savor the sight, then wheeled for the door. “Consider this my resignation, Mr. Hill.”
His certain stride carried him back to the waiting turbolift, past the pair of Iotran guards he’d incapacitated before dismantling the secretary droid and barging into the Chairman’s office. A quick glance told him the guards had not moved, at least, but logic cautioned that San Hill had managed to signal his duress somehow to the security team.
My security team, he thought, then dismissed with a hollow laugh as he boarded the lift. Most of his security team was comprised of droids. Droids could be reprogrammed, and would be in a heartbeat as soon as his treachery became known. He couldn’t expect any help from that quarter, not even from his cherished IG-100 guards.
Qymaen knew the turbolift did not move any slower than usual, but each passing minute stretched his nerves thin with agonizing anticipation, giving his racing thoughts ample time to invent and fight his way through numerous bloody scenarios that might await him in the lobby. And yet, when the doors opened, he froze as he found himself staring down Riklon Tost, visor down, expression hard and expectant, hand hovering near his holstered weapon.
Their standoff lasted two full seconds before they both moved simultaneously.
Just as Tost’s foot twitched forward, Qymaen lashed out and grabbed the collar of the Iotran’s armor, yanking him into the turbolift and throwing him against the curved wall. As Tost stumbled past him, Qymaen yanked the captain’s blaster from its holster, elbowed the button for the doors, then surged after him, pinning him in place and jamming the borrowed blaster under his broad jaw.
“Go to the twenty-third floor.”
This was not the response Qymaen expected, let alone couched in such a composed, if somewhat tense voice. “What?” he growled, pressuring the muzzle of the blaster into yielding flesh.
Tost’s throat bobbed under metal as he swallowed, still remarkably calm for his current straits. “There’s access to the emergency exit on that floor. Turbolift at the back of the building. You bypass the lobby.”
Qymaen glared, but he hesitated.
“My men will have the door open in seconds if you don’t start this thing up.”
With a snarl of frustration, Qymaen whirled away and mashed the buttons for floor twenty-three. As the turbolift hummed and lurched to life, he rounded back on the Iotran with the blaster aimed at his heart, probing him for signs of imminent betrayal. “Why?” he demanded.
Tost rubbed his neck and shot Qymaen a scathing look of his own. “No, Grievous, you tell me. I saw the security footage, so why? Why am I helping you after you attacked San Hill? Why am I not taking you into custody? Why am I not beating you into submission right now?”
Qymaen bristled. “Do you really think you could best me?”
“That isn’t the point, you arrogant—!” Tost stopped, clenching his teeth and pinning his fists to his sides. “I know you are reckless, and dangerous, but I don’t think you would harm Chairman Hill without a reason. I want to hear your reason.”
Glowering and resentful, but finally realizing he had little choice but to trust the Iotran, Qymaen relaxed his grip on Tost’s blaster. “He has been lying to me—keeping me isolated from my people, my friends and family.” His voice trembled, but not in misery. “The Banking Clan never passed on my messages to my planet, and never gave me the messages Kalee tried to send here. For all I know, the reports I’ve been fed about Kalee aren’t true. All I do know is what I learned by myself: that there is trouble back home, and I intend to be there to help fix it.”
Tost betrayed little emotion in his expression, guarding his reaction carefully lest it be misconstrued. “It has been my understanding that your contract with the IGBC remains in place until you satisfy your planet’s debt.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a long way off from fulfilling your contract.”
“Yes.”
The turbolift ground to a halt and the door dinged open. Whether by fortune or design, there was not much activity on the twenty-third floor. Tost gestured toward the doorway, and, smothering his reservations, Qymaen led the way out of the lift. The Iotran set off at a brisk pace, beckoning Qymaen to follow. “When they recall the lift and we aren’t on it, this will be the first floor they check,” he explained quickly. “We can’t waste any time. This way.”
Qymaen stuck to Tost like a shadow, darting glances at every doorway they passed for unwelcome IGBC employees. “Did my reason satisfy you, then?” he uttered as they jogged. “Or were you just waiting for an excuse to betray your employer?”
“San Hill has never been a kind man,” grunted Tost, “yet he was always fair to me, and kept his word. I don’t know why he’s treated you this way—and from what I’ve seen, he’s done it from the start—but I don’t agree with it. So if you’re committed to fleeing, I’ll help you leave this building unscathed, and I’ll delay sending word to High Port to detain you for as long as I can. That’s all I can offer.”
“Fleeing,” Qymaen repeated in a baleful hiss. “Fleeing is for cowards! I am only going back to where I belong.”
Tost diplomatically chose to say nothing, focusing instead on counting the number of turns he’d already made. The emergency turbolift was reserved for the extremely rare occasion when the main hub malfunctioned or was otherwise compromised, with a small number of access points distributed at reasonable intervals throughout the headquarters. The exit could only be considered well-marked by those who knew of its existence to begin with, and the Iotran wasn’t certain he’d ever familiarized himself with the route to take on this particular floor.
Qymaen, in the meantime, continued to rant, itching for a violent outlet but limiting his ferocity to his tirade. “I was foolish to trust him, but he is the greater fool for thinking he could control me. To cut me off from my home—to make me think—ya, íb-ku huul! Years! For years! But I didn’t break. The likes of San Hill can’t break me. I should have broken him. Break that—stupid, smug face—graah!”
Suddenly it was too much—too much to bear, too much to contain, blood boiling, red subsuming his vision—and he unleashed what he could in as tactile a manner as possible. Tost spun around to the sound of Qymaen’s roar and the CRACK of property destruction, in time to watch the Kaleesh extract his fist from a crumbling dent in the wall, white gravel and residue dusting his now-bloodied knuckles.
“Got that out of your system?” he asked flatly. “Let’s go.”
Neither the hole in the wall or the ache in his hand satisfied what howled and clawed at the back of his mind, but Qymaen fell into step behind Tost, fury relegated to silent seething.
“This is it,” the captain announced at last as they found a door tucked at the end of a quiet hall, uncelebrated and unassuming. “Just through here. Take it to the bottom floor. That puts you in the repo hangar. Easy exit. Just watch out for Lancers outside.”
“And you’re staying?” prompted Qymaen, though it was more a statement than a question.
“Like I said, Chairman Hill has always treated me well enough.” Tost shrugged, playing up his insouciance for a bit of needed levity. “And I like my job.”
“You are good at it,” said Qymaen, as much of an expression of gratitude as he was willing to grant in the moment. He paused midway to the door, then added grimly, “Except now.”
Tost nodded his understanding. “You escaped me. Make it look convincing.”
He’d barely finished speaking before Qymaen flicked his wrist and aimed Tost’s blaster, firing upon his left kneecap. The Iotran loosed a bark of startled pain and started to buckle to the floor, but he found himself instead supported in Qymaen’s grasp. He had a split-second to consider whether to be indignant or grateful, then received a heavy blow to the side of his temple.
Qymaen let the unconscious Iotran drop, then tossed his borrowed blaster next to his sprawled form. The shrieking in his head quieted to a contented purr, placated by this more direct if misguided act of retribution, but bitter anger endured, guiding him through the door and into the emergency turbolift.
This was it, wasn’t it?
No going back. No salvaging the wreckage of what he’d wrought. No apologies he could make—none he wanted to offer, besides—that could absolve his actions. In the moment, reeling a bit from the vehemence of his battle rush, knuckles wet and stinging, head and heart pounding in time, he could think of nothing he wanted more than to burn every bridge he’d crossed if it meant returning home.
And, he realized with vicious, giddy relish when the turbolift deposited him in the heart of the repo hangar, there were far more things than bridges to burn.
Qymaen and his DT-57 blaster rent a swath of smoking, scorched destruction in his wake as he cut a direct path through the hangar for the underground lot where employees parked their personal vehicles. Screeching alarms and whirling red lights chased his speeder from the premises and out onto the street, where he expertly evaded a trio of mounted Lancer droids (by blasting all three of them through the head in rapid succession).
He needed to leave Muunilinst as quickly as possible, and his only option was to make a break for the skyhook, duck through High Port and abscond on the Martyr—a contingency he’d prepared for immediately after returning from Concordia by packing his shuttle with his belongings and making certain it was well-stocked and refueled. He’d intended to travel to Kalee one way or another, after all. A part of him had known it would be a swift and violent departure. For the moment, he was glad of it. He hadn’t felt as alive in months—perhaps years—as he did now, accelerating down the streets of Harnaidan, shedding his responsibilities to the IGBC with all the respect afforded to a discarded cloak, looking forward to the path that lay before him despite the terrible magnitude of what he left behind.
This is no mistake, he assured himself, determined to cling to the defiant energy that drove him forth. This is a triumph.
You aren’t fleeing; you’re taking back control.
Enough of your uselessness. Enough of your stagnant existence, your degrading obedience.
Time to return to what you know.
Time to do what you do best.
It’s time to go home.